
Book 'F 7 



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THE 



NEMESIS OF FAITH. 



GJ^OKGE WOODFALL AND SON, j 

ANGEL COUKT, SKINNEU STREET, f- 






THE 



NEMESIS OF FAITH 



JQ^^A. FROUDE, M.A., 

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FELLOW OP EXETER COLLEGE, OXFOKD. 



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JOHN CHAPMAN, 142, STRAND. 



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THE 



NEMESIS OF FAITH 



LETTER I. 



Huntley Parsonage^ September, 4, 1843. 

I PROMISED SO long ago to write to you, dear 
Arthur, that by this time, if you have not already 
forgotten me, you will at least have begun to think 
it desirable to forget me as soon as possible, for 
an ungrateful, good-for-nothing fellow; but I am 
going to be very just, and pay heavy interest — and 
L think letter debts are hke all other debts. If 
you pay them when they are due, they are taken 
as a matter of course, and without gratitude ; but 
leave them till your poor creditor leaves off expect- 
ing, and then they fall in Hke a godsend. So I 
hope you are abeady delighted at the sight of my 
handwriting, and when you get to the end of these 
long sheets, which I am intending to fill to you, I 
shall be quite back again in my old favour. Per- 
haps, though, I am too sanguine; I have nothing 

B 



2 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

but myself to write about, no facts, no theories, no 
opinions, no adventures, no sentiments, nothing but 
my own poor barren individualism, of considerable 
interest to me, but I do not know why I should pre- 
sume it will be so to you. Egotism is not tire- 
some, or it ought not to be, if one is sincere about 
oneself; but it is so hard to be sincere. Well, never 
mind, I mean to be, and you know me well enough 
to see through me when I am humbugging. A 
year has gone since we parted ; I have had nothing 
all this time to tell you, except that I was unsettled 
and uncomfortable, and why should I trouble you 
with that ? Now you will see I want your help, so 
now I come to you. It is not that I have had any 
positive grievance, but I seem to have had hold of 
every thing by the wrong side. My father is very 
anxious to see me settled into some profession or 
other, and here have the three black graces alter- 
nately been presenting their charms to me, and I 
can't get the apple delivered; I turn from one to 
the other, and the last I look at seems always the 
ugliest, always has some disagreeable feature I can- 
not reconcile myself with. I cannot tell why it is, 
Arthur, but I scarcely know a professional man 
I can like, and certainly not one who has been what 
the world calls successful, that I should the least 
wish to resemble. The roads they have to travel 
are beaten in by the unscrupulous as well as the 
scrupulous ; they are none of the cleanest, and the 
race is too fast to give one time to pick one's way. 
I know men try to keep their private conscience 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 3 

distinct from their professional conscience, but it does 
not always do. Their nature, hke the dyer's hand, is 
subdued to what it works in ; and you know a law- 
yer when you see him, or a doctor, or a profes- 
sional clergyman. They are not simply men, but 
men of a particular sort, and, unfortunately, some- 
thing not more but less than men— men who have 
sacrificed their own selves to become the paid in- 
struments of a system. There may be exceptions 
where there is very great genius; but I am not a 
genius, and I cannot trust myself to hope I should 
be an exception, and so I go round and round, and 
always end where I began, m difficulties. I be- 
lieve you know something of my father — a more 
upright, excellent man never breathed ; and though 
not very clever, yet he has a breadth of solid under- 
standing which, for such creatures as we men are, is 
far better furniture to be sent into the world with 
than any cleverness ; and I am sure there must be 
something wrong in my fastidiousness when he so 
highly disapproves of it. He was contented to 
laugh at me, you know, as long as I was at college, 
because my dreaming, as he called it, did not inter- 
fere with my succeeding there; but it is quite 
another thing now, and he urges me again and 
again, almost with a severity of reproof which is 
bitterly distressing to me. I have shown talents, 
he says, of which it is my duty to make use ; the 
common sense of mankind has marked out the best 
ways to use them, and it is worse than ridiculous in 
a young man such as I am to set myself up to be dif- 

B 2 



4 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

ferent from everybody else, and to be too good to 
do what many of the best and wisest men he knows, 
are doing. My brothers were all getting on honour- 
( ably and steadily, and why was not I ? It was 
true, he allowed, that unscrupulous men did some- 
times succeed professionally, but it was not by their 
faults but by their virtues, by activity and prudence, 
and manly self-restraint He added some- 
thing which made a deeper impression upon me 
than this; for all this I had said often and often to 
myself. I had told him that as I had a small inde- 
pendence, I thought I might wait at least a year or 
two, and give myself time to understand my own 
wishes clearly before I committed myself "You 
say you wish to be a man, Markham," he answered, 
" and not a professional man. I do not propose to 
control you. At your age, and with your talents, 
you must learn what life is now, not from me, but 
from Hfe itself; but if you will hear an old man's 
opinion, I will give it you. If you think you can 
temper yourself into manliness by sitting here over 
your books, supposing you will grow into it as 
a matter of course by a rule of necessity, in the 
same way as your body grows old, it is the very 
silliest fancy that ever tempted a young man into 
his ruin. You cannot dream yourself into a cha- 
racter ; you must hammer and forge yourself one. 
Go out into life, you will find your chance there, 
and only there. You ask to wait. It is like a 
timid boy waiting on the river bank to take his 
plunge. The longer he stands shivering the harder 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 5 

he finds it. At the year's end you will see more 
difficulties than you see now, because you yourself 
will have grown feebler. Wait one more, and then 
you will most likely go on to the end, into your 
second childhood of helplessness." 

What shall I do, Arthur? It is so true every 
word of this. I feel it is. I know it is ; and it is 
shameful, indeed, to rust into nothingness. Yet 
what to do ! Surely it were kinder far, to train us 
out from our cradles into a course which should be 
chosen for us, and make us begin our crawling on 
the road we are to travel, with spelling-books of law 
and physic, and nursery courts of justice, or dis- 
eased dolls to lecture or to doctor. All would be 
so easy then; we should form each about our proper 
centre, and revolve calmly and surely in the orbit 
into which we were projected. It is a frightful 
business to bring us up to be only men, and then 
bid us choose for ourselves one of three roads which 
are to take us down again. For they do take us 
down. Unless we are in Fortune's best books, and 
among those same lucky sons of genius, for law or 
physic, we must learn a very dirty lesson, and train 
our lips into very smooth chicanery, or it is slow 
enough her wheel will move with us. Speak the 
truth, and the truth only, and in the first you are a 
fool, and in the second you are a brute. "Ah, well, 
but at least the Church is open to you," you will 
say, and that is what my father says. There the 
most fastidious person will find the purest course 
he could mark down for himself fall infinitely short 



6 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

of what is required of him. And you believe I 
always intended to be a clergyman ; yes, and it is 
true. I always did intend it ; and if you could tell 
the envy with which I watch my friends passing in 
within the precincts of its order into what ought to 
be the holiest and happiest of lives ; alas ! here too 
I seem to be barred out, and one of my worst 
sorrows is that I cannot tell my father why I am. 
I will tell you, Arthur, but not now. I must think 
well over what I am to write on that subject, and 
you shall have another letter about it. But, oh, 
what a happy life that is ! I ^cannot understand 
why, as a body, clergymen are so fatally uninterest- 
ing; they who through all their waking hours 
ought to have for their one thought the deepest 
and most absorbing interests of humanity. It is 
the curse of making it a profession— a road to get 
on upon, to succeed in life upon. The base stain 
is apparent in their very language, too sad an index 
of what they are. Their " duty" what is it ? — to 
patter through the two Sunday services. For a 
Httle money one of them will undertake the other's 
duty for him. And what do they all aim at? — get- 
ting hvings ! not cures of souls, but livings ; some- 
thing which will keep their wretched bodies Hving 
in the comforts they have found indispensable. 
What business have they, any one of them, with a 
thought of what becomes of their poor wretched 
selves at all ? To hear them preaching, to hear the 
words they use in these same duties of theirs, one 
would suppose they really beheved that getting on. 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 7. 

and getting rich, and getting comfortable, were 
quite the last things a Christian should propose 
to himself. They certainly say so. Alas ! with the 
mass of them, the pulpit keeps its old meaning, 
and is hut a stage. Off the stage there is the old 
prate of the old world stories, the patronage of this 
rich man and that, the vacant benefice or cathedral 
stall. So and so, lucky fellow, has married a 
bishop's daughter, and the bishop himself has the 
best dressed wife and the best equipage in London ; 
and oh, bitterest satire of all ! the very pulpit elo- 
quence with which they can paint the better Hfe, the 
beauty of Christianity, is valued only but as a means 
of advancing them into what they condemn. Yet 
this need not be, and this is not what I shrink 
from. The Church is an ill-paid profession, and so 
of the men who make a profession the main thing 
in this Hfe of ours, it must be contented with the 
refuse of the educated. Not more than one in 
fifty takes orders who has a chance in any other 
Hne; but there is this one in each fifty, and so 
noble some of these units are, that they are not 
only enough for the salt of their class, but for the 
salt of the world too. Men who do indeed spend 
their Hves among the poor and the suffering, who 
go down and are content to make a home in those 
rivers of wretchedness that run below the surface of 
this modem society, asking nothing but to shed 
their lives, to pour one drop of sweetness into that 
bitter stream of injustice : oh, Arthur, what men they 
are ! what a duty that might be ! I think if it is 



» THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

true what they say who profit by this modem sys- 
tem ; if there is indeed no help for it, and an ever 
increasing multitude of miserable beings must drag 
on their wretched years in toil and suffering that 
a few may be idle and enjoy; if there be no hope 
for them ; if to-morrow must be as to-day, and they 
are to Hve but to labour, and when their strength is 
spent, are but to languish out an unpensioned old 
age on a pubhc charity which degrades what it sus- 
tains ; if this be indeed the lot which, by an irre- 
vocable decree, it has pleased Providence to stamp 
upon the huge majority of mankind, incomparably 
the highest privilege which could be given to any 
one of us is to be allowed to sacrifice himself to 
them, to teach them to hope for a more just here- 
after, and to make their present more endurable 
by raising their minds to endure it. I have but one 
comfort in thinking of the poor, and that is, that 
we get somehow adjusted to the condition in which 
we grow up, and we do not miss the absence of 
what we have never enjoyed. They do not wear out 
faster, at least not much faster, than the better 
favoured ; that is, if you may reckon up hfe by 
years, and if such as we leave them may be called 
life. Oh what a clergyman might do ! To have 
them all for an hour at least each week collected to 
be taught by him, really wishing to listen, if he will 
but take the trouble to understand them, and to 
learn what they require to be told. How sick one 
is of all sermons, such as they are ! Why will men 
go on thrashing over and again the old withered 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 9 

straw that was thrashed out centuries ago, when 
every field is waving with fresh, quite other, crops 
craving for their hand? Is it indolence or folly? 
What is it ? I could hnger on for hours over an 
employment I so much long for. It seems to be 
mine, as I dwell upon it; so entirely it is all I 
crave for; I have not talent enough to create fresh 
thought for strong cultivated men; but it has always 
been my delight to translate downwards what others 
have created; and I have been so much about 
among the poor, and with all their faults and all 
their ignorance, I love their simple hearty ways so 
much that I could say with all my heart I felt 
myself called, as the Prayer Book says, to be their 
teacher; and yet, and yet .... well, good bye^ 
and bear with me. 

Your affectionate 

M. SUTHERLAND. 



LETTER II. 

September 6. 

'* What possible reason can I have for not taking 
orders?" you may well ask. I promised to tell 
you, and I will; yet I know not what you will 
think of me when I have done so. Wherever as 
yet I have even dared to hint my feehngs, I have 
been met by looks so cold and withering that I 
tremble at exposing them even to you. 0, 
Arthur, do not — do not make my trial harder — do 
not you leave me too — do not make me lose my 

B 3 



10 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

oldest, my only friend. Do not be frightened, I 
have committed no crime, at least nothing which I 
can conceive to he a crime ; and yet they say it is 
one. Arthur, before I can be made a clergyman, I 
rmust declare that I unfeignedly beheve all *' the 
canonical writings of the Old Testament ;" and I 
cannot. What does it mean — unfeignedly beheve 
it all? That all the actions related there are good, 
and all the opinions true? Not that, of course; 
because then aU that Job's friends said would be as 
true as what Ehhu said, and Lot's actions as good 
as Abraham's. But, I suppose, we are to beheve 
that aU those books were written by men imme- 
diately inspired by God to write them, because He 
thought them good for the education of mankind; 
that whatever is told in those books as a fact is a 
real fact, and that the Psalms and Prophecies were 
composed under the dictation of the Holy Spirit. 
Now I am not going to weary you with all the 
scientific difficulties and critical difficulties, and, 
worse than all, metaphysical difficulties, which have 
worn the subject so threadbare; though I think but 
badly of this poor modern sophistry of ours, which 
stumbles on between its two opinions, and, when it 
is hunted to its death, runs its head into the sand 
and will not see what it does not like to see. If 
there were no difficulties but these, and only my 
reason were perplexed, I could easily school my 
reason ; I could tell myself that God accommodated 
His revelations to the existing condition of mankind, 
and wrote in their language. But, Arthur, bear 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 11 

with me, and at least hear me ; though my head 
may deceive me, my heart camiot. I will not, I 
must not, believe that the all -just, all-merciful, all- 
good God can be such a Being as I find liim there 
described. He ! He ! to have created mankind 
liable to fall — to have laid them in the way of a 
temptation under which He knew they would fall, 
and then curse them and all who were to come of 
them, and aU the world, for their sakes ; jealous, pas- 
sionate, capricious, revengeful, punishing children for j 
their fathers' sins, tempting men, or at least permit- 
ting them to be tempted into bUndness and folly, and . 
then destroying them. 0, Arthur, Arthur ! this is not | 
a Being to whom I could teach poor man to look 
up to out of his sufferings in love and hope. What ! 
that with no motive but His own will He chose out 
arbitrarily, for no merit of their own, as an eastern 
despot chooses his favomites, one small section of 
mankind, leaving aU the world besides to devil-wor- 
ship and hes ; that the pure, truth-loving Persian of 
the mountains, who moiTung and night poured out 
his simple prayer to the Universal Father for the 
good of all His children ; that the noble Greeks of 
Marathon and Thermopylae, the austere and stately 
Romans, that then these were outcasts, ahens, devil- 
worsliippers ; and that one strange people of fanatics 
so hideously cruel that even women and children 
fell in slaughtered heaps before their indiscrimi- 
nating swords, that these alone were the true God's 
true servants ; that God bid them do these things, 
and, exulting in their successful vengeance as a 
vindication of His honour, compelled the spheres 



12 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

out of their courses to stand still and assist the mur- 
dering! And why all this mur- 
dering? Sometimes for sins committed five cen- 
turies past; while, for those five centuries, genera- 
tion was let go on to follow generation in a darkness 
out of which no dehverance was offered them ; for 
^^srael monopoHzed God. It is nothing to say these 
were exceptive peculiar cases. The nation to whom 
they were given never thought them pecuhar cases. 
And what is Revelation if it is hut a catalogue of 
examples, not which we are, hut which we are not, 
to follow ? No, Arthm" ! this is not God. This is 
a fiend. Oh, surely this is not the faith of men who 
worshipped the Father of mankind, hut rather of 
the followers of a god who was hut one of many a 
god among gods — the God of Israel, as Baal was 
the god of the nations ; and I cannot think the 
disputes and jealousies of Heaven are tried and set- 
tled hy the swords of earth. No ! If I may he- 
lieve that the Jews were men Hke the rest, and 
distinguished from the rest not hy any difference in 
kind in the nature of their relations with Heaven, 
hut hy their own extraordinary character; that, 
more than any. set of men who ever Hved, they 
reahsed the fife and active energy of God upon 
earth — that they believed they were the favourites 
of Heaven — and that, in spite of the savage fanati- 
cism into which it sometimes plunged them, their 
faith did in a way make them what they professed 
to he, and produced fruits of a most wonderful kind 
—all is easy to me then. Winning Canaan hy 
strength, it was natural they, or at least their 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 13 

children, should tliink that God had given it them ; 
and in those fierce and lawless times many dreadful 
things might he done, which at least we can under- 
stand and allow for, though in sorrow. But that 
the unchanging God should have directly prompted, 
should have interfered to assist in what humanity 
shudders at while it reads — oh, I would sooner perish 
for ever than stoop down hefore a Being who may 
have power to crush me, hut whom my heart forhids 
me to reverence. It runs through the whole Old 
Testament this feehng, with but a few great excep- 
tions, and it is httle use to make particulars. David 
may have been the man after God's heart if the 
Israehtes were His pecuHar people; and the furious 
zealots in the last desperate wars in Palestine were 
the same people as their fathers who slaughtered 
Amalek. David himself is the great type of the 
race in his savageness and in his piety ! Who could 
heheve that the same man who wrote the De pro- 
fundis Domini could have craved to wash his foot- 
steps in his enemy's blood ? The war of good and 
evil is mightiest in mightiest souls, and even in 
the darkest time the heart will maintain its right 
against the hardest creed. Bear with me, Arthur, 
we read the Bible with very different eyes. For 
myself, the most dehghtful trait in the entire long 
history is that golden thread of humanity which 
winds along below the cruelty of the exclusive 
theory, and here and there appears in protest, in 
touches of deeper s}Tnpathy for its victims, than are 
ever found for the more highly-favoured. Who are 



14 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

those who most call out our tears ? Is it not the 
outcast mother setting down her child that she may 
not see it die, the injured Esau, the fallen Saul, 
Aiah's daughter watching by her murdered children, 
or that unhappy husband who followed his wife 
weeping all along the road as David's minions were 
dragging her to his harem ? 

If the Church is a profession, I know all this is 
very weak and very fooHsh ; one might enter it 
then, accepting what it insists upon, in the same 
way as the lawyer takes the laws as he finds them, 
not perhaps as he would have them if he had to 
choose, but as facts existing which it is not his 
place to quarrel with. And many sensible people 
do accept the Bible in this way, they take it as it 
stands ; they are not responsible, and they are con- 
tented to draw reasonable doctrines from it, gliding 
over what is inconvenient. I know, too, there are 
some excellent, oh, most excellent people, deep and 
serious people, who do not find the difficulties there 
at all which I find, and accept it all with awe and 
fear, perhaps, but still with a real, serious conviction 
that it is all true. Perhaps it is. And then I . . . 
I . . . am . . . am . . . 

And then there is another thing, Arthur, which 
seems to be taught, not in the Old Testament but 
in the New, which I should have to say I beheved ; 
a doctrine this, not a history, and a doctrine so 
horrible that it could only have taken root in man- 
kind when they were struggling in the perplexities 
of Manicheeism, and believed that the Devil held a 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 15 

divided empire with God. I mean that the largest \ 
portion of mankind, these very people who live 
ahout us, feel with us, act with us, are our daily 
companions — the people we meet at dinner or see 
in the streets, that are Hnked in with us with innu- 
merable ties of common interests, common sympa- 
thies, common occupations — these very people are to 
he tortured for ever and ever in unspeakable agonies. 
My God ! and for what ? They are thrown out 
into life, into an atmosphere impregnated with 
temptation, with characters unformed, with imperfect 
natures out of wliich to form them, under necessity 
of a thousand false steps, and yet with every one 
scored down for vengeance ; and laying up for them- 
selves a retribution so infinitely dreadful that our 
whole soul sluinks horror-struck before the very 
imagination of it ; and this under the decree of an 
all-just, all-bountiful God — the God of love and 
mercy. O, Arthur ! when a crime of one of our 
fallen brothers comes before ourselves to judge, how 
unspeakably difficult we find it to measure the 
balance of the sin; cause winding out of cause, 
temptation out of temptation ; and the more closely 
we know the poor guilty one, the nature with which 
he was born, the circumstances which have deve- 
loped it, how endlessly our difficulty grows upon 
us ! — how more and more it seems to have been 
inevitable, to deserve (if we may use the word 
deserve) not anger and punishment, but tears and 
pity and forgiveness. And for God who knows all ! 
who not only knows all but who determined all — 



IB THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

who dealt lis out our natures and placed us as it 
pleased Him ! " what more could have been done to 
my vineyard that I have not done ? " Alas ! then, if 
Omnipotence could not bring but wild grapes there, 
why was the poor vineyard planted ? It never asked 
to be. Why fling it out here into these few miserable 
years; when it cannot choose but fall to ruin, and 
then must be thrown into hell-fire for ever ? . . . . 
I cannot tell. It may be from some moral obli- 
quity in myself, or from some strange disease ; but 
for me, and I should think too for every human 
being in whose breast a human heart is beating, to 
know that one single creature is in that dreadful 
place would make a hell of heaven itself And 
they have hearts in heaven, for they love there. 
Justice ! what justice ! I beheve that fallen crea- 
tures perish, perish for ever, for only good can live, 
and good has not been theirs ; but how durst men 
forge our Saviour's words "eternal death" into so 
horrible a meaning ? And even if he did use other 
words, and seem to countenance such a meaning for 
them (and what witness have we that He did, ex- 
cept that of men whose ignorance or prejudice 
might well have interpreted these words wrongly as 
they did so many others?) .... But I am on dan- 
gerous ground ; only it seems to me that it would be 
as reasonable to build a doctrine on every poet's 
metaphor, or lecture on the organic structure of the 
Almighty because it is said the scent of Noah's 
sacrifice pleased Him, as to build theories of the 
everlasting destiny of mankind on a single vehe- 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 17 

ment expression of one whose entire language was 
a figure. 

I know but one man, of more than miserable in- 
tellect, who in these modern times has dared defend 
eternal punishment on the score oi justice, and that 
is Leibnitz ; a man who, if I know him rightly, 
chose the subject from its difficulty as an oppor- 
tunity for the display of his genius, and cared so 
Httle for the truth that his conclusions did not cost 
his heart a pang, or wring a single tear from him. 
And what does Leibnitz say ? That sin, forsooth, 
though itself be only finite, yet, because it is 
against an Infinite Being, contracts a character of 
infinity, and so must be infinitely punished. It is 
odd that the clever Leibnitz should not have seen 
that a finite punishment, inflicted by the same 
Infinite Being, would itself of course contract the 
same character of infinity. But what trifling all 
this is, Arthur ! The heart spurns metaphysics, and 
one good honest feeling tears their shrivelled spider 
webs to atoms. No, if I am to be a minister of 
rehgion, I must teach the poor people that they 
have a Father in heaven, not a tyrant; one who 
loves them all beyond power of heart to conceive ; 
who is sorry when they do wrong, not angry ; whom 
they are to love and dread, not with caitifi" coward 
fear, but with deepest awe and reverence, as the all- 
pure, all-good, all-holy. I could never fear a God 
who kept a hell prison-house. No, not though he 
flung me there because I refused. There is a 
power stronger than such a one ; and it is possible 



18 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

to walk unscathed even in the burning furnace. 
What ! am I to tell these poor milHons of sufferers, 
who struggle on their wretched Hves of want and 
misery, starved into sin, maddened into passion by 
the fiends of hunger and privation, in ignorance 
because they were never taught, and with but enough 
of knowledge to feel the deep injustice under which 
they are pining; am I to tell them, I say, that 
there is no hope for them here, and less than none 
hereafter ; that the grave is but a precipice off which 
all, all of them, save here one and there one, will 
fall down into another life, to which the worst of 
earth is heaven ? " Why, why," they may hft up 
their torn hands and cry in bitter anger, "why. 
Almighty One, were we ever bom at all, if it was 
but for this?" Nay, I suppose the happiest, the 
most highly favoured, of mankind looking back over 
a long unchequered life, where all the best and 
highest which earth has to give her children has 
been scattered at their feet, looking back and 
telling over their days, might count upon their 
fingers the hours which they had lived, which were 
worth the pains it cost their mother to bear them. 
And all for this ! No, Arthur, no ! I never can 
teach this; I would not so dishonour God as to 
lend my voice to perpetuate all the mad and foolish 
things which men have dared to say of Him. I 
beheve that we may find in the Bible the highest 
and purest rehgion most of all in the his- 
tory of Him in whose name we all are called. His 
rehgion — not the Christian religion, but the religion 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 19 

of Christ — the poor man's gospel ; the message of 
forgiveness, of reconciHation, of love; and, oh, how 
gladly would I spend my Hfe, in season and out of 
season, in preaching this ! But I must have no hell, 
terrors, none of these fear doctrines ; they were not 
in the early creeds, God knows whether they were 
ever in the early gospels, or ever passed His Hps. 
He went down to hell, but it was to break the chains, 
not to bind them. Advise me — oh, advise me ! I 
cannot stand by myself — I am not strong enough, 
without the support of system and position, to work 
an independent way ; and my father and my friends 
too, it would be endless bitterness with them. Ad- 
vise me ! No, you cannot advise me ! With what 
absurd childishness one goes on asking advice of 
people, knowing all the while that only one's self can 
judge, and yet shrinking from the responsibility; 
only do not hate me, Arthur — do not write me cold 
stuffy letters about my state of mind. For Hea- 
ven's sake, if you love me, if you ever loved me, 
spare me that. Show me if I am wrong. It is 
easy to be mistaken. But do not tell me it is 
wicked of me to have thought all this, for it is not 
— I am certain it is not. 

M. S. 



20 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

LETTER III. 

September 11. 

I DID not say half I wished to say, Arthur : ever 
since I wrote I have heen thinking how confusedly 
and stupidly I expressed myself. Somehow one 
never has one's thoughts in the right place when 
they are wanted, either for writing or for talking; 
and it is only after, when they can do no good, that 
the stupid helpless things come poking up into one's 
mind. "This is what I wanted; this is what I 
ought to have said," you think; you catch him, 
and he is a Proteus in your fingers, and you have 
only got a monster, half human and half heast. 
Ah, well, it is ill laughing with a heavy heart. I 
will try again. At any rate you will be clever 
enough to see what I mean. I suppose most people 
would allow they found some difficulties at any rate 
with the Old Testament, when I find insuperable 
ones, only they cannot feel them as I do. To 
believe, for instance, that God worked miracles to 
plague a nation for their ruler's sins, ought to make 
their hves intolerable. Perhaps if it all really is as 
they say, a certain apathy of heart is one of the 
rewards of their imphcit faith to save them from its 
consequences. 

But why do they beheve it at all ? They must 
say because it is in the Bible. Yes, here it is. Other 
books we may sit in judgment upon, but not upon 
the Bible. That is the exception, the one book 
which is wholly and entirely true. And we are to 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 21 

beKeve whatever is there, no matter how monstrous, 
on the authority of God. He has told us, and that 
is enough. But how do they know He has told, us. 
The Church says so. Why does the Church say 
so? Because the Jews said so. And how do we 
know the Jews could not be mistaken? Because 
thei/ said they were God's people, and God guided 
them. One would have thought if this were so. He 
would have guided them in the interpreting their 
books too, and we ought to be all Jews now. But, 
in the name of Heaven, what is the history of those 
books which we call the Old Testament? No one 
knows who the authors were of the greater part of 
them, or even at what date they were written. They 
make no claim to be inspired themselves; at least 
only the prophets make such claim; before the 
captivity there was no collection at all ; they had 
only the Book of the Law, as it is called, of which 
they took such bad care that what that was none of 
us now know. The Pentateuch has not the sHghtest 
pretensions to be what Moses read in the ears of all 
the people, and Joshua wrote upon twelve stones. 
There is no doubt at all that it was written, or at 
least compiled into its present form, long long after. 
All we can make out is, that in the later and fallen 
age of the Jews, when their imaginative greatness 
had forsaken them, when they were more than half 
Chaldaicized, and their high enthusiastic faith and j 
passionate devotion to their God had dwindled down 
into intolerant arrogance and barren fanaticism, 
wishing to console themselves for their present de- 



22 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

gradation by the glory of the past, they made a collec- 
,^;l^on out of the wreck of the old Hterature. Digests, 
like the Books of Chronicles were compiled out of the 
fragments of the old Prophets ; the whole was then 
cast together in one great mould, where of course God 
was the founder ; the number of books, sentences, 
words, syllables, letters, were all counted, and sealed 
with mystical meanings, and behold the one complete 
entire Divine Eevelation of the Almighty, composed, 
compiled, and finished by Himself. Were ever 
such huge pretensions hung upon so shght a thread? 
And the worst is, that by this tinsel veil we have 
hung before it, the real splendour of the Bible is so 
entirely hidden from us; what with our arbitrary 
chapter readings cutting subjects into pieces, our 
commentaries and interpretations, built not on 
laboured examination of what the people were for 
whom and by whom the books were written, but 
piled together hap -hazard out of polemic lucubra- 
tions as if they were all prophecies, and their mean- 
ings fixed by after history; with the unfathomed 
dulness of our Service, in which the Venite Ex- 
ultemus is followed by the Miserere mei Domine in 
the same dull, stupid, soulless tone, as if it was a 
barrel organ that was playing them, and not a 
human voice speaking out of human heart. Oh, 
what are we doing but making a very idol of the 
Bible, treating it as if we supposed that to read out 
\ of it and in it had mechanical virtue, Hke spells and 
'- charms — that it worked not as thought upon thought, 
but by some juggHng process of tahsmanic mate- 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 23 

rialism. Oh, Heavens ! how our hearts bleed with 
the poor mourners by the waters of Babylon ; how 
we exult with them, and share their happiness in 
the glorious hymns they poured out on their return, 
if we may beheve that it was they themselves whose 
souls were flowing out there in passionate simphcity. 
But how are we flung back upon ourselves per- 
plexed, confused, and stupified, when we are told 
that all this is, as Coleridge calls it, but a kind 
of superhuman ventriloquism — that the voice and 
the hearts of the singers no more made this music 
than the sun clock makes the hours which it marks 
upon the dial-plate! And then all David's prayers 
in his banishment. What, were they not prayers 
then? Not his prayers as his broken spirit flung 
itself upon God, but model prayers which God was 
making for mankind, and using but David's lips to 
articulate them into form ? Ah, well ! The Maho- 
metans say their Koran was written by God. The 
Hindoos say the Vedas were; we say the Bible was, 
and we are but interested witnesses in deciding 
absolutely and exclusively for ourselves. If it be 
immeasurably the liighest of the three, it is because 
it is not the most divine but the most human. It 
does not difier from them in kind ; and it seems to 
me that in ascribing it to God we are doing a 
double dishonour; to ourselves for want of faith in 
our soul's strength, and to God in making Him re- 
sponsible for our weakness. There is nothing in it 
but what men might have written ; much, oh much, 
which it would drive me mad to think any but men. 



24 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

and most mistaken men, had written. Yet still as 
a whole, it is hy far the noblest collection of sacred 
books in the world ; the outpouring of the mind of a 

( people in whom a larger share of God's spirit was 
for many centuries working than in any other of man- 

I kind, or who at least most clearly caught and carried 

\ home to themselves the idea of the direct and im- 
mediate dependence of the world upon Him. It 
is so good that as men looked at it they said this 
is too good for man : nothing but the inspiration 
of God could have given this. Likely enough men 
should say so; but what might be admired as a 
metaphor, became petrified into a doctrine, and per- 
haps the world has never witnessed any more gro- 
tesque idol worship than what has resulted from 
it in modern Bibliolatry. And yet they say we are 
not Christians, we cannot be religious teachers, nay, 
we are without rehgion, we are infidels, unless we 
beheve with them. We have not yet found the 
liberty with which Christ has made us free. In- 
fidels, Arthur ! Ah, it is a hard word ! The only 
infidelity I know is to distrust God, to distrust his 
care of us, his love for us. And yet that word! 
How words cHng to us, and like an accursed spell 

\ force us to become what they say we have become. 
When I go to church, the old church of my old 
child days, when I hear the old famihar bells, with 
their warm sweet heart music, and the young and 
the old troop by along the road in their best 
Sunday dresses, old well-known faces, and young 
unknown ones, which by and by will grow to be so 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 25 

like them, when I hear the lessons, the old lessons, 
being read in the old way, and all the old associations 
come floating hack upon me, telling me what I too 
once was, before I ever doubted things were what I 
was taught they were; oh, they sound so sad, so 
bitterly sad. The tears rise into my eyes; the 
church seems full of voices, whispering round me. 
Infidel, Infidel, Apostate ; all those beheving faces 
in then' reverent attention glisten with reproaches, 
so calm, they look so dignified, so earnestly composed. 
I wish— I wish I had never been born. Tilings grow 
worse and worse at home. Little things I have let 
fall are turned against me. The temperature is get- 
ting very cold, and our once warm and happy family, 
where every feeling used to flow so sweetly together ^ 
in one common stream, seems freezing up, at least 
wherever I am, into disunited ice crystals. Arthur", 
Arthur, the sick heart often wants a warm climate 
as well as the sick body. They talk in whispers 
before me. EeHgious subjects are pointedly avoided. 
If I say anything myself, I am chilled with frosty 
monosyllables, and to no one soul around me can I 
utter out a single thought. What! Do they fancy 
it is any such wonderful self-indulgence, this being 
compelled to doubt what they stay trusting in? 
That it is a license for some strange sin ? No, no, 
no. And yet they are right too — yes, it is very 
good, and very right. They are only following the 1 
old lesson, which I followed too once, that belief \ 
comes of obedience ; and that it is only for disobe- j 
dience that it is taken from us. My father says i 

c 



26 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

before them, that I am indolent and selfish; and the 
rest seems all of a piece and a part of the same 

thing Yet God is my witness, nothing 

which I ever believed has parted from me, but it has 
been torn up by the roots bleeding out of my heart. 
Oh! that tree of knowledge, that death in life. 
Why, why are we compelled to know anything, 
I when each step gained in knowledge is but one 
more nerve summoned out into consciousness of 
pain? Better, far better, if what is happier is better, 
to Hve on from day to day, from year to year, caring 
only to supply the wants each moment feels, leaving 
earth to care for earth, and the present for the pre- 
sent, and never seeking to disentomb the past, or 
draw the curtain of the future. Suppose I was to 
write a book, Arthur, and say. I was inspired to 
write it — hke Emmanuel Swedenborg — a madhouse 
would be the best place for me, because common 
sense would at once pass sentence on the pre- 
tension, and if it did not, the poor book would be 
its own sentence. But no one dreams that there 
is anything improbable in the Jewish writers hav- 
ing been inspired; and they will not let us try 
j the books by their contents. No, it is written, 
they say, and so we must believe. Was there 
ever such a jumble of arguments? The Bible 
is its own evidence, because it is so pure and holy. 
This and that thing we find in parts of it seems 
neither pure nor holy; but because it is there, we 
must believe it — on some other evidence therefore 
—on what, then? on the witness of the Church. 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 27 

The Church proves the Bible, and the Bible proves 
the Church — cloudy pillars rotating upon air — 
round and round the theory goes whirling like the 
summer wind-gusts. It has been the sacred book 
by which for so many centuries so many human 
souls have hved, and prayed, and died. So have 
the Vedas, so has the Koran, so has the Zenda 
Vesta. As many milUon souls day after day have 
watched the sun rise for their morning prayer, and 
followed its setting by committing themselves to 
God's care for protection in the darkness from the 
powers of night, have lived humble. God-fearing 
lives, and gone to their graves with the same trust 
of a life beyond waiting all who have been faithful 
to those books — as many, or more, perhaps, than the 
Christians — no, there is no monopoly of God's 
favour. The evidence of religion — ah, I know 
where the true evidence Hes, by the pleadings of my 
own heart against me. Why, why must it be that 
all these ahen histories, these strange theories and 
doctrines, should be all sown in together in the 
child seed-bed with the pure grain of Christianity? 
so that in after years it is impossible to root them 
out without trampHng over rudely on the good. 
And we must do it. They may be harmless, grow- 
ing there unrecognised; but known for what they 
are, their poison opens then, and they or we must 
die. Arthur, is it treason to the Power which has 
given us our reason, and willed that we shall use it, 
if I say I would gladly give away all I am, and all 
I ever may become, all the years, every one of them 

c 2 



28 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

whicli may be given me to live, but for one week of 
my old child's faith, to go back to calm and peace 
again, and then to die in hope. Oh for one look of 
the blue sky as it looked then when we called it 
Heaven ! The old black wood lies round the house 
as it lay then, but I have no fear now of its dark 
hollow, of the black glades under its trees. There 
are no fairies and no ghosts there any more ; only 
the church bells and the church music have any- 
thing of the old tones, and they are silent, too, 
except at rare, mournful, gusty intervals. Whatever 
after evidence we may find, if we are so happy as to 
find any, to strengthen our religious convictions, it 
is down in childhood their roots are struck, and it is 
on old association that they feed. Evidence can 
be nothing but a stay to prevent the grown tree 
from falling; it can never make it grow or assist 
its powers of life. The old family prayers, which 
taught us to reverence prayer, however little we 
understood its meaning; the far dearer private 
prayers at our own bedside; the dear friends for 
whom we prayed; the still calm Sunday, with its 
best clothes and tiresome services, which we little 
thought were going so deep into our heart, when 
we thought them so long and tedious; yes, it is 
among these so trifling seeming scenes, these, and 
a thousand more, that our faith has wound among 
our heartstrings; and it is the thought of these 
scenes now which threatens me with madness as I 
call them up again. 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 29 

LETTEE IV. 

Sept. 13. 

I CAN do nothing but write to you, dear Arthur. 
You must hear with me — I am sure you will; it is 
so inexpressible a rehef to me. My feeUngs have 
begun to flow to you, and it is unsafe to check an 
opening wound. I find little pleasure enough in 
being at home : all day in the beautiful autumn I 
wander about by myself, and listen to what my heart 
is saying to me ; and then in the evening I creep 
back and hide myself in my little room and write it 
all down for you. I wonder whether I am serious 
in wishing to die. I certainly am in wishing I had 
never been born ; and at least it seems to me that 
if I was told I was to go with this summer's leaves, 
it would do more to make me happy for the weeks 
they have got to hang upon the trees, than any other 
news which could be brought to me. I love the au- 
tumn. I love to watch my days dropping off one by 
one before the steady blowing time. You and I, 
Arthur, are but twenty-four, and your hfe is just be- 
ginning and mine seems to be done. It is well for 
me that I was never very hopeful ; and the sweetest 
moments I can have now are when I stray at even- 
ing alone along the shore and watch the sea-birds as 
they sweep away after the sun on their gilded gleam- 
ing wings, or when the swallows are gathering for 
their long flight to bright smihng lands one knows 
not where. Some hope there is in their parting 
beauty, even when they seem to leave us desolate ; 
and as the sweet planets come out above the purple 



30 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

twilight, they are opening glimpses into some other 
world to which peace has flown away, and I, perhaps, 
may follow. There is a village in the wood, two or 
three miles from here — there was an abbey there 
once. But there is nothing left of the abbey but 
its crumbHng walls, and it serves only for a burying- 
ground and for sentimental picnic parties. I was 
there to-day; I sat there a long time, I do not know 
how long — I was not conscious of the place. I was 
hstening to what it was saying to me. I will write 
it down and look at it, and you shall look at it : an 
odd enough subject for a Cliristian ruin to choose — 
it began to talk about paganism. " Do you know 
what paganism means ? " it said. Pagani, Pagans, 
the old country villagers. In all history there is no 
more touching word than that one of Pagan. 

In the great cities where men gather in their 
crowds and the work of the world is done, and the 
fate of the world is determined, there it is that the 
ideas of succeeding eras breed and grow and gather 
form and power, and grave out the moulds for the 
stamp of after ages. There it was, in those old 
Roman times, that the new faith rose in its strength, 
with its churches, its lecture-rooms, its societies. It 
threw down the gorgeous temples, it bmut their 
carved cedar work, it defiled the altars and scattered 
the ashes to the winds. The statues were sanctified 
and made the images of saints, the augurs' colleges 
were rudely violated, and they who were still faithful 
were ofiered up as martyrs, or scattered as wander- 
ers over the face of the earth, and the old gods 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 31 

were expelled from tlieir old dominion — the divinity 
of natui'e before the divinity of man. . . . Change is 
strong, but habit is strong too; and you cannot 
change the old for new, hke a garment. Far out in 
the country, in the woods, in the villages, for a few 
more centuries, the deposed gods still found a re- 
fuge in the simple minds of simple men, who were 
contented to walk in the ways of their fathers — to 
beheve where they had beheved, to pray where they 
had prayed. Wliat was it to these, the pomp of the 
gorgeous worship, the hierarchy of saints, the proud 
cathedral, and the thoughts wliich shook mankind ? 
Did not the sky bend over them as of old in its 
cahn beauty, the sun roU on the same old path, and 
give them hght and wannth and happy sunny hearts ? 
The stai'-gods still watched them as they slept — why 
should they turn away ? why seek for newer guard- 
ians ? Year by year the earth put on her robes of 
leaves and sweetest flowers — the rich harvests waved 
over the corn-fields, and the ffuit-trees and the vine- 
yards travailed as of old ; winter and summer, spring 
and autumn, rain and sunsliine, day and night, moving 
on in their never-ending harmony of change. The 
gods of their fathers had given their fathers these 
good tilings ; had their power waxed slack ? Was not 
their powerful hand stretched out still ? Pan, ahnighty 
Pan ! He had given, and he gave still. Who watched 
over the travail pangs of the poor ewes at the breed- 
ing time ? Pan, ahnighty Pan ! Who taught the 
happy shepherd to cai-ve Ms love-notes in the invi- 
sible air, and fill the summer nights with softest, 



32 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

sweetest flute music ? Pan, almighty Pan ! Had 
the water-nymphs forsaken their grottoes where the 
fountains were flowing as of old ? Were the sha- 
dows of the deep woods less holy ? Did the en- 
chanted nightingale speak less surely the tale of her 
sorrow ? As it was in the days of their fathers so 
it was in theirs — their fathers had gone down to the 
dust in the old ways, and so would they go down 
and join them. They sought no better; alike in 
death as in their hfe, they would beheve where they 
had heheved, though the creed was hut a crumhhng 
ruin; sacrifice where they had sacrificed; hope as 
they hoped ; and die with them too ! Who shall say 
that those poor peasants were not acting in the 
spirit we most venerate, most adore ; that theirs was 
not the true heart language which we cannot choose 
but love ? And what has been their reward ? They 
have sent down their name to be the by- word of all 
after ages ; the worst reproach of the worst men — 
a name convertible with atheism and devil-worship. 
" And now look at me," the old ruin said ; '' cen- 
turies have rolled away, the young conqueror is de- 
crepit now; dying, as the old faith died, in the 
scenes where that faith first died ; and Angering where 
it lingered. The same sad sweet scene is acting over 
once again. I was the college of the priests, and they 
are gone, and I am but a dead ruin where the dead 
bury their dead. The village church is outhving me 
for a few more generations ; there still ring, Sunday 
after Sunday, its old reverend bells, and there come still 
the simple peasants in their simple dresses — pastor 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 33 

and flock still with the old belief; there beneath its 
walls and ruins they still gather down into the dust, 
fathers and children sleeping there together, waiting 
for immortahty ; wives and husbands resting side by 
side in fond hope that they shall wake and hnk again 
the love-chain which death has broken ; so simple, 
so reverend, so beautiful ! Yet is not that, too, all 
passing away, away beyond recall ? The old monks 
are dead. The hermit-saints and hallowed relics are 
dust and ashes now. The fairies dance no more 
around the charmed forest ring. They are gone, 
gone even here. The creed still seems to stand ; but 
the creed is dead in the thoughts of mankind. Its 
roots are cut away, down where alone it can gather 
strength for hfe, and other forms are rising there ; 
and once again, and more and more, as day passes 
after day, the aged faith of aged centuries will be 
exiled as the old was to the simple inhabitants of 
these simple places. Once, once for all, if you would 
save your heart from breaking, learn this lesson — 
once for all you must cease, in this world, to believe 
in the eternity of any creed or form at all. What- 
ever grows in time is a child of time, and is born 
and lives, and dies at its appointed day like our- 
selves. To be born in pain and nursed in hardship, 
a bounding imaginative youth, a strong vigorous 
manhood, a decline which refuses to believe it is a[ 
dechne, and still asserts its strength to be what it^* 
was, a decrepit old age, a hasty impatient heir, and a 
death-bed made beautiful by the abiding love of 
some few true-hearted friends ; such is the round of 

c 3 



34 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

fate through nature, through the seasons, through 
the Hfe of each of us, through the Hfe of famihes, of 
states, of forms of government, of creeds. It was 
so, it is so, it ever shall he so. Life is change, to 
cease to change is to cease to hve ; yet if you may 
shed a tear heside the death-hed of an old friend, 
let not your heart he silent on the dissolving of a 
faith." 

This is what the old ruin said to me, Arthur. 
Arthur, did the ruin speak true ? 



LETTEE V. 

Sept, 20. 

Things grow worse and worse with me at home; 
my hrothers are all away, lucky fellows, happy and 
employed. Oh, how I envy them. Letters come 
home, sueh bright sunny letters. They are getting 
on so well, Henry has just got his epaulets, and his 
captain took the occasion of writing a most pohte 
letter to my father about it. He said he promised 
to be one of the most excellent officers in the ser- 
vice, and so much more than merely a sailor, nice 
fellow, that he is ; and his highest pleasure seems to 
be the pleasure he knows his success will give my 
father. Then for James and Frederick; you know 
they are both younger than I am, yet James is 
already a junior partner in the house, and Frederick 
tells us he is intending to strike for wages, as all 
the hardest cases in his master's office are handed 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 36 

over to Mm; they seem born to get on, and wlien 
they come here, it is such an entire happy hearty 
hoHday with them, riding, hunting, shooting, balls, 
and parties; they are the hfe of everything about 
us ; while poor I — I, who was once expected too 
to be a credit to myself, am doing nothing and can 
do nothing. I cannot work, for there is notliing 
I can work upon, and yet I never have a holiday, 
my wretched thoughts cling about me like evil 
spirits. I have no taste for what is called amusement. 
I suppose I do not like hunting and shooting, but I 
say to myself that I think it wrong to make my plea- 
sures out of helpless creatures' pain ; and for the 
party- going, one had better have a hght heart to Hke 
parties, or to be liked by them. Books nauseate me; 
I seem to have learnt all that I can learn from 
books, or else to have lost the power of learning 
anything from them ; and of all these modem writers 
there is not one who will come boldly up and meet 
the question which hes the nearest, or ought to he 
the nearest, to our hearts. Oarlyle ! Carlyle only \ 
raises questions he cannot answer, and seems best ; 
contented if he can make the rest of us as discon-' 
tented as himself; and all the others, all, that is, who 
have any power at all, fight beside rehgion, either as 
if it were not worth saving, or as if it had nothing 
to do with them. Every day five columns of the 
Times are full of advertisements of new books, most 
of them with enough of flashy cleverness to let us 
endure them tlirough a single reading; but then 
there is an end of them. A really serious, open- 



36 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

minded, single-hearted man— there is not one in the 
whole fraternity; and the impudent presumption of 
these reviewers, critics and all; well, at any rate, I 
am flung utterly upon myself, on my own resources, 
sufficiently miserable ones. My sisters work hard 
in the parish, if not in the best way, yet with strong 
enough sense of their duty, and with no lack of in- 
dustry; they sometimes ask me to join them, but it 
is in the patronisiQg unpleasant sort of way which 
reflects upon my helplessness, as if they partly pitied 
and partly despised me ; not that I should care for 
that; but somehow everything they do is in the 
formal business style, as if ^' the poor" were a set of 
things with which something had to be done, instead 
of human beings with hearts to feel and sufferiags 
to be felt for and souls to be reverenced ; — and so I 
wander about mostly my own way. I go a good deal 
among the poor too, but at a distance from here ; 
and there are many pleasant cottages where I am 
sure of a smile and plenty of affection from the 
children. This is all very helpless, I know it is ; but 
there is no mending it, it must be. I wait for guid- 
ance, and my soul must have it, if I give it time. 

M. S. 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 37 



LETTER VI. 

Oct. 10. 

Well, Arthur, we are come to a crisis now. Here I 
am at the parting of the ways; I look down one, and 
I see a bright flowery road, with friends and fortune 
smihng, and a happy home, and the work I longed 
for, all which promise to make hfe delightful : down 
the other and I see — oh, I will not look down the 
other ; if I do I shall never dare to choose it. Do 
you not think that sometimes when matters are at 
the worst with us, when we appear to have done all 
which we ourselves can do, yet all has been unavail- 
ing, and we have only shown we cannot, not we will 
not, help ourselves; that often just then something 
comes, almost as if supematurally, to settle for us, as 
if our guardian angel took pity on our perplexities, 
and then at last obtained leave to help us ? And if it 
be so, then what might only be a coincidence be- 
comes a call of Providence, a voice from Heaven, a 
command. But I am running on as usual with my 
own feehngs, and I have not told you what it is 
which has happened — after all it is nothing so very 
great — the bishop has offered my father a Hving for \ 
me ; it was done in a most dehcate way, and with a 
high incidental comphment paid to myself. My 
father, before he spoke to me, had at the first mention 
of it reminded the bishop I was not yet in orders. 
The bishop said that in my case it did not matter, 
from the high character which I had borne at col- 
lege, and from the way I had distinguished myself 



38 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

there. I had been spending my time, lie had no 
doubt, to the very best advantage at home ; and he 
thought it was a good sign in any young man when 
he took a longer time for study and moral prepara- 
tion, instead of rushing at once into his profession. 
It was odd to see how flattered my father was, and 
how immediately his own opinion of me began to 
alter when he saw great people disposed to make 
much of me. He was embarrassed, however, in 
teUing this to me, and he evidently had more doubts 
how I should take the information than he had 
liked to tell the bishop. Both the ordinations could 
be managed within a short time of one another, so 
there was no escape that way; my face did not 
brighten and my father's consequently fell ; I saw he 
had set his heart upon it. I could not bring myself 
to mortify him with the peremptory no, which my 
conscience flung upon my lips ; I said I would think 
about it and give him my answer in two days. In 
justice to him as well as myself, I felt I could not 
act any more entirely on my own judgment ; I could 
not open myself to him, no matter why, I could 

not but the next day I rode over to 

to talk to the dean, my uncle. I made no mystery 
of anything with him ; I told him exactly how it was 
with me, my own difficulties and my embarrassment 
at home. It relieved me to see how httle he was 
startled, and he was so kind that I could ill forgive 
myself for having so long shrunk from so warm a 
mediator. He said he was not at all surprised, not 
that he thought there was anything particularly 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 39 

wrong about myself which should have led me 
astray, but my case he said was the case of almost 
all young men of talent before they passed from the - 
school of books into that of hfe. Of course revela- 
tion had a great many most perplexing difficulties 
about it ; but then he said^ just as my father said 
before, I must remember that the real discipline of ^ 
the mind is action, not speculation; and regular 
activity alone could keep soul or body from dis- 
ease. To sit still and think was simply fatal; a 
morbid sensitiveness crept over the feehngs like the : 
nervous tenderness of an unhealthy body, and unless 
I could rouse myself to exertion, there would be no 
end at all to the disorder of which I complained. 
It was odd he treated it simply as a disorder, hke one 
of the bodily disorders we have once in our hves to go 
through, which a few weeks' parish routine and prac- 
tical acquaintance with mankind would dissipate as 
a matter of course. I felt I was sinking, but I 
made another effi^rt : would it not be better, I asked, 
if I was to make trial first, and take work as a lay- 
man under some sensible and experienced rector. 
He thought not; it would be difficult to find a person 
with a mind which could influence mine, and it would 
not do to risk a failure. The really valuable lessons 
were the lessons we taught ourselves, and as this 
opportunity had offered, it would be wrong, he fancied, 
to reject it: my father's feelings ought to weigh 
with me. Then surely, I said, I ought to tell the 
bishop, at any rate, something of which I had told 
him ; but my uncle said no again. At present, at 



40 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

least, there was no occasion; of course it was all 
nothing, as my own good sense in a very short 
time must show me ; and though a person in high 
authority might know things privately without any 
inconvenience, yet a puhhc or ofl&cial communication 
would he an emharrassing challenge upon him to 
take a part, for which in reahty he might he quite 
sure there was no necessity. Well, I need not tell 
you what I felt; it was something hke a sentence of 
death, and yet I had determined to ahide hy his 
opinion. It seemed at any rate as if the responsi- 
hihty was not mine, though in my heart I knew it 
was. I set my teeth and galloped home, and to 
carry my fate tln'ough, and give myself no time to 
quarrel with it, I went at once to my father and 
committed myself to an assent. The heartfelt plea- 
sure I saw I was giving him went far to reheve my 
own heart; at any rate the sacrifice was not for 
notliing. Life is more than a theory, and love of 
truth hutters no bread : old men who have had to 
struggle along their way, who know the endless bit- 
terness, the grave moral deterioration which follow 
an empty exchequer, may well be pardoned for an 
over- wish to see their sons secured from it ; hunger, 
at least, is a reality, and when I am as old as he is, 
and have sons of mine to manage for, I shall be 
quite as anxious I dare say about the ''provision." 
He was dehghted, you may be sure he was; 
we seemed to forget that there had been any cool- 
ness or difference between us; in a Httle while we 
were talking over my income, the condition the 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 41 

house was in, and the furniture he was going to pro- 
vide for me : a good wife was to be a serious advantage 
to me, and even more ambitious prospects were already 
beginning to dawn over the horizon ; and now here I 
am dismissed to my own room and my own reflection. 
What have I done ? After all, only what many do under 
a lower temptation. I have consented for the sake of \ 
others, while they do it only for their own; and after 
all perhaps what my uncle says is true, and by and 
by I shall find it so ; and then one remembers the 
case of Synesius, who when he was pressed to take 
a bishopric by the Alexandrian metropohtan, de- 
clared he would not teach fables in church unless he 
might philosophise at home. But Synesius made 
his conditions and got them accepted ; while I . . . 
Arthur, I cannot cheat myself with sophistry : it is 
not too late; I ought not, I think I ought not. 
Oh, curses on this old helpless theological fanaticism 
which encumbers us with a clumsy panoply of books 
and doctrines before it will trust us with our duties. 
Surely the character of the teacher, his powers, 
and the culture he has given them, the heart that 
there is in him, is what should be looked for in a 
clergyman ; not the readiness of servility with which 
he will plod along under chains, and mutter through 
the Sunday ritual. I beheve in God, not because \ 
the Bible tells me that He is, but because my heart ' 
tells me so ; and the same heart tells me we can only ^ 
have His peace with us if we love Him and obey j 
Him, and that we can only be happy when we each I 
love our neighbour better than ourselves. This is 



42 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

what the clergyman's business is to teach : when the 
Bible says the same, let him use the Bible language. 
But there are many other things, besides what 
are in the Bible, which he ought to learn if he would 
assist the people to do what he tells them to do, if 
he would really give them rest from that painftd 
vacancy of mind which hfe spent in routine of never- 
ending work entails upon them ; he should study 
their work, and the natural laws that are working in 
it ; he should make another version of the Bible for 
them in what is for ever before then- eyes, in the corn- 
field, in the meadow, in the workshop, at the weaver's 
loom, in the market-places and the warehouses. Here, 
better far than in any books, God has written the 
tables of His commandments; and here, where men's 
work hes, their teacher should show them how to read 
them. Let every flower have a second image to their 
eyes; let him bring in for witness to the love of the 
great Creator, every bird, every beast, every poorest 
insect; let the teeming earth tell of Him as in her 
unwearied labour-pangs she fashions up the material 
elements into the great rolhng flood of hfe which 
ebbs and flows around them. They might do some- 
thing, these clergy, if they would go to work over 
this ground ; labouring in good earnest they would be 
for the souls of mankind. But they will not do it, 
and I long to do it ; and yet, and yet, Arthur, my 
conscience shrinks from those melancholy articles. 
It seems to say I should not trifle with my own 
soul ; and the guilt, if guilt there be, in all the sorrow 
which may follow on my exclusion, will rest not on me 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. ' 43 

wlio shrink from them, but on those who compel sub- 
mission to them as the price at which we are to be 
admitted. 

But if I decline this hving, what is to become of 
me? T shall finally ofiend those whose happiness 
I value far more than I do my own. I shall con- 
demn myself to an inert and self- destroying help- 
lessness. Educated as I have been, there is no pro- 
fession, except that of an author, which would be 
tolerable to me; and to be an author, I fear, I fear 
I have too Kttle talent. The men that write books, 
Carlyle says, are now the world's priests, the spi- 
ritual directors of mankind. No doubt they are; 
and it shows the folly and madness of trying still 
to enforce tests, that you do but silence a man in 
the pulpit, to send his voice along the press into 
every corner of the land. God aboHshed tests for 
all purposes, except of mischief and vexation, when 
he gave mankind the Printing Press. What is the 
result of sustaining them, but that we are all at the 
mercy now of any clever self-assumer ? and while our 
nominal teachers answer no end for us, except the 
hour's sleep on Sunday, the minds of all of us, from 
highest lords to enhghtened operatives, are formed in 
reading-rooms, in lecture-rooms, at the bar of pubhc- 
houses, by all the shrewdest, and often most worthless, 
novel writers, or paper editors. Yet even this is better 
than nothing — better than that people should be left 
to their pulpit teachers, such as they are. Oh ! how I 
wish I could write. I try sometimes ; for I seem to 
feel myself overflowing with thoughts, and I cry out 



44 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

to be relieved of them. But it is so stiff and miser- 
able when I get anything done. What seemed so clear 
and Hquid, comes out so thick, stupid, and frost- 
bitten, that I myself, who put the idea there, can 
hardly find it for shame, if I go look for it a few 
days after. Still, if there was a chance for me ! To 
be an author — to make my thoughts the law of other 
minds! — to form a link, however humble, a real 
hving link, in the electric chain which conducts the 
light of the ages ! Oh ! how my heart bums at the 
very hope. How gladly I would bear all the cold- 
ness, the abuse, the insults, the poverty, all the ill 
things which the world ever pays as the wages of 
authors who do their duty, if I could feel that I was 
indeed doing my duty so — being of any service so. 
I should have no difficulty about this hving then, 
Arthur. I should know my work, and I would set 
about it with all my soul. But to do nothing ; to 
sit with folded hands, and the rust eating into my 
heart ; or, because I cannot do the very best, to lie 
down and die of despair ! Oh ! yes ; this hfe of 
ours is hke the deep sea-water, when with bold 
exertion we may swim securely on the surface, but 
to rest is to sink and drown. Tell me, Arthur, tell 
me, what I ought to do. 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 45 



LETTER VII. 

Oct. 20. 
Thank you a thousand times, my dear, dear friend, 
for your most kind, most wise letter. I will try, as 
you tell me, to have done with these inane specu- 
lations. The world is a mystery ; and if the Bihle 
be the account which God has been pleased to give 
us of it, we may well be content if we find no fewer 
difl&culties in the Bible, as Butler says, than we find 
in the world. I am no better than the wise and 
admirable men who have found deepest rest and 
happiness there, and I tliink I can do what you say 
is the least I ought to do — subdue my doubts, if I 
cannot satisfy them, and try the system which wise 
men say can only be known in trying. I will taste 
and see, and perhaps God will be gracious to me. 
At any rate, believing, as I do, in Providence with 
all my heart, I cannot doubt that it has been the 
way in which God has chosen to have His people 
taught ; and what am I, that I should dare to fancy 
that I know better now ? I will take it in submis- 
sion ; and as I am to teach with authority, so I will 
endeavour to learn under authority. At any rate, 
there can be no doubt what one ought to teach. 
With the Bible for a text-book, there is no doubt 
what, in the main, is the drift of its teaching, what- 
ever one may think of parts of it. The best which 
can be said to individuals to urge them to their duty, 
is in that book ; and we have our conscience, too, and 
the Bible of universal history too ; and, more than all. 



46 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

experience — the experience of our own hearts — each 
of which falls in with the great Bihle to the moulding 
of our minds. They do as a fact mould them; they 
must do it ; and therefore it is God's will that they 
should ; so that hetween them all there is no lack 
of matter, without breaking debated ground. Well, 
then, I will try; and if I am wrong, if I am indeed sin- 
ning against Hght, I am at least led astray by no un- 
worthy motive in wishing to do something for God's 
service, and to spare distress to those who are most 
dear to me. For the rest — for advancement in the 
world, for the favour and the smiles of men, for 
comfort, and ease, and respectabihty, and position, 
and those other things for which so many men in 
these days sell their souls, God is my witness they 
have not weighed so much in the balance with me, 
as to put me on my guard against their influence. 
Oh, no ! It were easy to go without all these things ; 
far easier than to bear them. Oh ! what a frightful 
business is this modem society ; the race for wealth 
— wealth. I am ashamed to write the word. Wealth 
means well-being, weal, the opposite of woe. And 
is that money ? or can money buy it ? We boast 
vmuch of the purity of our faith, of the sins of 
{idolatry among the Eomanists, and we send mis- 
sionaries to the poor unenhghtened heathens, to 
bring them out of their darkness into our light, our 
glorious hght; but oh! if you may measure the 
fearfulness of an idol by the blood which stains its 
sacrifice, by the multitude of its victims, where in all 
the world, in the fetish of the poor negro, in the 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 47 

liideous car of Indian Juggernaut, can you find a 
monster whose worship is polluted by such enor- 
mity as this English one of money ! You must par- 
don me, my heart is bleeding. I have made a 
resolution which has cost me more than tears, and 
now it is my best reUef to flow out to you at ran- 
dom. Yes, if God adapts His revelation to the 
capacities of mankind, and the fierceness of His 
rule over them to the depth of their abasement, 
then, indeed, there is a cry in heaven for something 
darker than the darkest discipline of the old idola- 
ters. Eiches! I suppose, at the smallest average, 
for the making of a single rich man, we make a 
thousand whose hfe-long is one flood- tide of misery. 
The charnel-houses of poverty are in the shadow of 
the palace; and as one is splendid, so is the other 
dark, poisonous, degraded. How can a man grow 
rich, except on the spoils of others'labour? His 
boasted prudence and economy, what is it but the 
most skilfully avaihng himself of their necessities, 
most resolutely closing up his heart against their 
cries to him for help ? In the homes of the poor, 
Arthur, I have seen — oh! I will not appal your 
ears with what I have seen — hunger, and vice, and 
brutal ignorance, and savage rage, in fierce con- 
sciousness of what they suffer. Poor wretches 
strugghng home from their day of toil, to find their 
children waiting for them with a cry for food, when 
they have none to give, and the famished mothers 
in broken-hearted despair. Ah, Heaven! and our 
beautiful account-books, so cleanly written, the 



48 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

polished persiflage of our white- gloved rulers, and 
the fair register of the nation's prosperity, what does 
it look like, up in heaven, in the angel's hook, 
Arthur? No; God has saved me, at least, from 
that had service ; there is no danger of my falling 
down hefore that monster; and the one lasting 
comfort which is left me now, is that I shall he ahle 
to pay hack something of my own long deht for 
my easy Hfe, and use tliis money they tell me I shall 
have, to clean my hands against the long account. 
Well, I will not hore you any more ; we cannot get 
on for ever with nothing hut gloom and sulkiness, 
and I have bothered you enough. It is night and 
day (or it ought to be) with all of us, if we want to 
keep in health. To he sure, now and then there will 
come a North Pole winter, with its six months' frost 
and darkness and mock suns : hut Nature is still fair, 
and pays them off with their six months of day. 
I have had my share of the shadow, so I hope I am 
not going to he cheated. It is marvellous the im- 
portance I find I have stepped into. There has 
been an expedition over to see my house that is to 
be ; and my sisters have settled the drawing-room 
paper, and the colour of the curtains, and promised 
to set up my penny club for me. I never told you, 
by the by, where this said estabhshment was to be. 
It is one of the suburbs of Morville, so I shall have 
a fashionable audience . And I hear there is already 
a schism at the tea-parties ; one side have settled 
that I am a Puseyite, and another, that that is im- 
possible, because I have such beautiful eyes. My 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 49 

eccentricities, which used to he my shame, have now 
hecome " so interesting." One young lady says 
Sehna will do for me, she is so hke me — so enthu- 
siastic ; another thinks that a good little plain com- 
mon-sense, hrisk, practical hody, is what I want, 
and so Clara was exactly made for me. My sisters 
do not particularise names, hut one thinks, and the 
other thinks, and they look knowing, and say, "Well, 
we shall see." " As long as thou doest well unto thy- 
self, men will speak good of thee ; " what a word 
is there ! It is hard, though, that the kind words 
won't come, when one most wants them. But it is 
a shame of me to he grumbling now. 

My father has prescribed a good hody of Anglican | 
divinity. By the by, how coolly we appropriate that ^ 
word, Arthur. Go into a picture gallery, and ask 
whose that rosy full-fed face may be, looking out from 
those rounded and frilled canonicals, and you are 
told it is Bishop So- and- So, an eminent divine; and 
then one thinks of the Author of the Eevelation, the 
only person, I believe, besides our own Anghcans, 
who has been thought worthy of that title. Well, 
any how, I am to have the divinity ; though I can- 
not say that in any one of those worthy writers, j 
except in Butler and in Berkeley, 1 could ever take ■ 
much pleasure. But I will try — by and by, not 
now; I have closed up my books, much to my 
father's dismay, who is in alarm for my examina- 
tion. The Bishop has formed a high opinion of me, 
and should not be disappointed. But, since my 
degree, I have read almost nothing but church 



50 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

history, and criticism, and theology, of all sorts, 
and in all languages ; and as I am gorged with it 
to the full, and as it has hut left me where I am, or 
where I was, it is wiser, perhaps, to leave it. And 
now that every thing is settled, dear Arthur, write 
me a nice hright letter. I have a fountain of cold 
water playing inside my own heart, which all hut 
extinguishes me — don't visit me with any more. It 
is hut smoking, my flax; do not quench it; and 
when you come to see me, either soon, or in after 
years, you shall find me — not with six children and 
:a pony carriage, and rosy cheeks, and much anxie- 
ties on my turnip crop — not pale with long watch- 
ings over fohos, nor with oiled hair inditing hymn- 
.hooks for the pious children of the upper classes— 
not correcting the press of my last missionary sermon 
— hut, I hope, a happier and a hetter man than I 
am now — and always your dear friend, Arthur. 



LETTER VIII. 

Morville, Jan. 1. 

.Well, my dear fiiend, it is over ; for good or evil I 
am committed finally to my calhng, and I must 
ahide hy it. With three-fourths of what I have 
undertaken it will be with all my heart — with the 

remaining fourth — with 

I do not console myself with the futile foohsh- 
iiesa which whispers to me that so many do the 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 51 

same; for, with such self- contradictory formularies 
as those to wliich we bind ourselves, with Articles 
insisting on our finding one thing in the Bible, and 
a Liturgy insisting on another, yet the Articles com- 
mitting themselves to the Liturgy, while notwith- 
standing they tell us, too, that the Bible is the only 
rule of faith ; it is impossible for any one who has 
ever thought or read to take them all without 
straining his conscience one way or another; I 
dare say this is true ; yet what others may have to 
do is nothing to me : I am only concerned with 
myself. In theory it is a thorny road enough ; but 
practically it is trodden in by so many sorts that I 
shall make shift to get along. I was ordained 
deacon privately a fortnight before Christmas, and 
priest yesterday — the Sunday after it. Exquisite 
satire on my state of mind ! — I was compHmented 
pubhcly on my examination, as having shown my- 
self possessed of so much well- digested information, 
and on being so prudent in avoiding extremes. In 
spite of my protestations I was chosen to assist in 
the service yesterday, and I was told privately that 
I had only to persist in such sensible moderation, 
and that with my talents, in these trying times, I 
should be an ornament to the Church, and that its 
highest places might be open to me. But, above 
all, my admonition concluded — " Be extreme in 
notliing — you do not require me to remind you of 
Aristotle's caution. Puseyism is the error on one 
side, German rationahsm on the other. Walk stea- 
dily in the position which our own admirable 

D 2 



52 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

Ohurcli has so wisely cliosen, equidistant between 
these two. Throw yourself into her spirit, and, 
with God's grace, you may rise hereafter to be one 
of those strong hghts wMch it is her highest 
honour and her highest witness to have nurtured." 
I felt so sick, Arthur. So, I may Hve to be hke 
Burnet, or Tillotson, or Bishop Newton, or Arch- 
deacon Paley — may I die sooner! I had nearly 
said so; but it was all so kind and so good, and 
there was such a sort of comfortable dignity about 
it, that in spite of myself I was awed and affected. 
Oh why, why, is there no confessional among us — 
no wise and affectionate friend with a commission 
to receive our sorrows, and with a right to guide 
us ? It is the commission we should have, Arthur ; 
anybody may advise us, but we want some one to 
order. I dare say the Bishop, if I had spoken out 
to him, would have been shocked enough, and would 
have ordered me not to undertake the office ; only 
it would not have been because I thought as I did, 
but because of the scandal in a candidate for orders 
saying he thought so. It would have been nothing 
but a " You must not." He would defend the place 
against me as an enemy ; but of my own soul might 
become what I could myself make of it ; he would 
have been troubled enough to have known what to 
do with that. Well, now for my duties (I suppose 
I may be extreme in them), and the blue chintz 
curtains, and the Penny Club ; and may God guide 
me ! . 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 63 

A year's inten^al elapses now between the date of 
this last letter and of the events to which we miis:t 
now pass forward. Sutherland was busy, and wrote 
less frequently than before ; and when they did come, 
his letters had lost something of that passionate 
truthfulness of tone which made them so telling 
even in their weakness. They were mostly of the 
self-blinded sort, and, as liis power was but scanty 
in that line, they were poor of their kind. It ap- 
peared as if he was endeavouring to persuade liim- 
self that he was contented and happy ; when it was 
too clear that all was still wrong with liim, that he 
had but silenced liimself, not replied to himself; and 
that the wound wliich, had it continued open, might 
have made progTess towards heaHng, or, at worst, 
continued but itself, being now closed over was cor- 
rupting inwardly, and the next outbreak might be 
far worse than the first. No censure shall be 
passed upon Ms conduct here ; and the casting of 
stones shall be left to those who are happy in a 
purer conscience than I can boast of. Some persons 
may find it easy and obvious to condemn him ; others 
may wonder at the foohshness of so much excite- 
ment over such a very trifle, and regard such exces- 
sive sensibihty as a kind of moral disease. But 
I, who was his friend, am unequal to either, and 
consider myself happy in having but to tell the story 
as it was ; to relate the facts as they grew into their 
consequences; the judgment which Providence passed 
upon him — on the whole, perhaps, a judgment as 
just as that Power's judgments usually are found to 



54 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

be. We had kept our misgivings to ourselves ; but 
from the first we had felt all of us a painful convic- 
tion that Sutherland's was not a mind to compose 
itself as he proposed and expected; and that the 
ideas which were disturbing him were of a kind 
which would gTow ; whatever Ms own will hked to 
say about it. Again, his occupation was sure to 
prove less agreeable than he hoped to find it. To 
be enthusiastic about doing much with human na- 
ture is a foolish business indeed; and, throwing 
himself into his work as he was doing, and expect- 
ing so much from it, would not the tide ebb as 
strongly as it was flowing ? It is a rash game this 

] setting our hearts on any future beyond what we 
have our own selves control over. Things do not 
walk as we settle with ourselves they ought to walk, 

I and to hope is almost the correlative of to be dis- 
appointed. Moreover, for the practical work of this 
world (and a parson's work is no exception), a 
thinking man is far more likely to require the sup- 
port of a creed to begin with, than to find the 
quarry in his work out of which he can sculpture one. 
Let his uncle the dean say what he pleased, it is no 
such easy matter after all to beUeve that all the 
poor unhappy beings we have left to rot in igno- 
rance and animalism, with minds scarcely so well 
cultivated as the instinct of a well- trained brute ; 
that the fashionable loungers of the higher classes, 
and the fight, good-tempered, gossip-dealing, ball- 
going young ladies, have really and truly immortal 
souls, which God came down from heaven to re- 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 55. 

deem, and for which He and the Devil are con- 
tending. It is easy to talk largely of the abstract 
dignity of humanity, and to take Socrates or Shake- 
speare for a type of it. One can understand some?' 
thing of spirits such as theirs continuing, because 
we see they do continue ; but really, with the mass 
of us, one would think the most reasonable as 
well as the kindest thing which could be done 
would be to put us out. The stars want no snuff- 
ing; but I fear, if we are all to be kept burning, 
whoever has the trimming of us will have work 
enough. Neither good enough for heaven, nor bad 
enough for the other place, we oscillate in the tem- 
perate inertia of folly ; answering no end whatever 
either of God or Devil; surely, one would think, 
we should be put out. 

At any rate, for this unfortunate normal state 
of the mass of mankind, Markham was not calcu- 
lating; he was, he thought, to be teaching men 
to love good and hate evil, and hardly any one of 
those he came in contact with would have power 
really to do either one or the other. Love and hate 
of such matters are intellectual passions, with whose 
names we must not dignify the commonplace self- 
ishnesses or respectabihties of common people, who 
may hke and may disHke, but cannot love and cannot 
hate. He fancied he was going to make the lot of 
poverty more tolerable : as far as giving away money 
went, no doubt he succeeded ; but it was unlucky for 
him that his parish lay on the outskirts of a large 
town. His poor were the operative poor, whose 



66 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

senses were too keenly quickened to let them sink 
into contentment, while they lived side by side with 
luxury which they knew was tramphng them under 
foot while it was feeding itself upon their hfe juices ; 
living, as they were, for the most part in filth and 
vice, yet without that torpor of faculty which helps 
the agricultural poor through their sufferings; 
without the sense of home either which these have, 
or of the feudahsm which secures the most ill- 
deserving landlord something of their respect and 
of their hearts. It was ill- dealing for Markham 
with such as they ; he was one of the hated order. 
They would take his money with a kind of sullen 
thanks, as if they knew very well they were but 
receiving a small instalment of their own rights ; 
but it was impossible to make them learn from him ; 
and their hard stern questions often wrung from 
him the bitter self- confession, that the doctrinal 
I food which the Church had to offer to men of 
I stamp hke that was but hke watered chaff for the 
■ giant dray-horse of the coal-yard. He could have 
> more easily touched them if he had spoken out 
what once had been his own feehngs ; but he had 
consented to be a declaiming instrument. He 
could only speak now — not as man to man, but as 
thing to thing; and when he found a man who 
would speak his own old doubts to him, he dis- 
covered that he had not been rewarded for his sub- 
mission with any enhghtenment to answer them. 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 57 



LETTEK IX. 



My dear Friend, 
Something very uncomfortable has befallen me : a 
fool can fire a powder magazine as well as the wisest 
of us ; and in spite of the mournful absurdity which 
hangs about the story, I cannot tell in what disaster 
it may not conclude. However, I will not anticipate ; 
you shall have it all ah initio. You know, in all 
large towns, there are those very detestable things, 
religious tea-parties. In this place, where there are 
such a number of business people, who have either 
retired from business themselves, or have withdrawn 
their families out of its atmosphere to make idle 
ladies and gentlemen of them, they are particularly 
rife ; all people want some excitement, and as they 
are in too uneasy a position in this world, and com- 
mon ordinary intercourse with one another is too 
vulgar to suit their ambition, they flit about in the 
shadow of the other world ; and with wax lights, and 
psalm singing, and edifying conversation, entertain 
one another with evening soirees, in imitation, as 
they fancy, of the angels. I hate these things, and 
as I have never cared to avoid saying so, I have of 
course made myself innumerable enemies, partly be- 
cause I ought to be shining among them as the 
central figure, and partly for the reason I have 
given for my dislike. I fear the main element of 
angel tea-parties is seldom there. These people can 
really have very httle love for one another from the 

D 3 



58 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

delight Avith which they mourn over each other's 
faihngs ; and when, unhappily, no such topic has 
newly presented itself, the edifying talk consists in 
the showing up of the poor Puseyites; or, if the 
party happen to he Puseyite, in the sort of self- 
satisfied sham husiness-like we- are- the- wise assump- 
tion, which is even more intolerable. I suppose the 
angels do not stimulate the monotony of their lives 
by half- envious stories of the unlawful words or un- 
lawful enjoyments of the other place, do they Ar- 
thur? Well, my place on the occasion has been 
commonly supplied by the town curates and rectors, 
who have done the honours, no doubt, far better 
than I could do them ; and I was contented to let 
it be so, and think no more about the matter. But 
it seems I must have made myself the occasion of a 
great deal of talk. I didn't marry any of them- — 
that was the first great sin. I patronised no socie- 
ties, and I threw cold water on philanthropy 
schemes. The clergy! I hope it is not wrong of 
me, but I cannot like them. Though I have not 
avoided their acquaintance, we have never got 
on; and after one or two ineffectual attempts, we 
have tacitly given up all hopes of intimacy. I 
never saw the clouds gathering. The Bishop cau- 
j^tioned me against party, and here it has been my 
\ sin that I am of none. What is not understood is 
suspected ; and, what is worse, it is for ever talked 
' (about. It is one of the oddest of men's infirmities, 
that no talk of what they do understand, is spicy 
enough to interest them. Well, never mind, I must 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 59 

tell my story. About a fortnight ago I was asked 
to dine with the Hickmans. They are one of the 
few families that I really like here. Miss Hick- 
man and I often meet in the dark staircases and the 
back alleys ; and, though the least trifle in the world 
given to cant, they have enough good sense and active 
conscience about them to be saved from any serious 
harm from it. I had often been there before, and 
yet I felt a strange reluctance on tliis unhappy 
evening. I think there is a spiritual scent in us 
which feels mischief coming, as they say birds 
scent storms. I felt somewhat assured on entering 
the drawing-room. I was the last ; and of the six 
or seven people present, there was only one I did 
not know at all, and one more with whom I was net 
intimate — this last, a young lady, a Miss LennoXj 
a niece of Mrs. Hickman, who had been for some 
weeks staying with them. The other was the newly- 
arrived rector of a parish in the neighbourhood, | 
who, I understood, had brought with him a reputa- 
tion of cleverness, and was shortly to be married 
to the young lady. No one was coming in the 
evening : alas ! who could have guessed from the plain 
unthreatening surface of that quiet little assembly^ 
what a cunning mine had been run below it, — that 
I had been brought there to be dragged into an ar- 
gumentary examination in which this new-found 
chymist was to analyse me, to expose my structure 
for his betrothed's spiritual pleasure, his own vanity, 
and the parish scandal. Well, unsuspecting, I went 
on tolerably well for some time : I rather hked the 



60 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

fellow. He was acute, not unwitty, and with a 
savoir /aire about him which made his talk a pleas- 
ing variety to me. Once or twice the ladies made 
serious remarks ; but he, as well as I, appeared to 
shrink from mixing more religion with our dinner 
than the grace which went before and which suc- 
ceeded it ; and in the half-hour we were left toge- 
ther after the ladies were gone, there was nothing 
to make me change my mind about him, except 
that I felt I could never be his friend ; he knew 
vv too much and felt too little. 

In the evening the conversation turned on a pro- 
jected meeting of the Bible Society, where they were 
all going. There was much talk — what such talk is 
you know. Nothing at first was directly addressed 
to me, so I took no part in it. The good rector came 
out with really some tolerably eloquent discours- 
ing; and the poor ladies drank up his words; oh, 
you should have seen them, I fancy the ioirjiancee 
drank a little too much of them, and got rather spi- 
ritually intoxicated — at least I hope she did — as some 
excuse for her. As he went rolling on for an hour 
or more, he described the world as grinding between 
the nether millstone of Popery and the upper mill- 
stone of Infidelity, and yet a universal millennium 
was very near indeed through this Bible activity. 
At the end he turned sharp upon me. Of course 
Mr. Sutherland would feel it his duty to take the 
chair on so truly blessed an occasion? 

Now, conceive societies, with chairmen, dragging at 
the poor world from between two such millstones ! ! 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 61 

" I believe you need not ask Mr. Sutherland," the 
young lady said, in a tone of satiric melancholy: 
" he never preaches the Bible." 

I didn't laugh. I was very near it ; but I luckily 
looked first at Mrs. Hickman, and saw her looking 
so bitterly distressed — and distressed, too, (how 
much a look can say !) from her partly sharing her 
niece's feeling, that I gathered up as much gravity 
as I could command. "I believe I read it to you 
twice every day," I said, " and my sermons are a 
great deal better than my own practice, perhaps 
than the practice of most of us." She coloured, be- / 
cause she thinks daily service formal and super- i 
stitious. I do not know what indignation would 
not have bubbled out of her lips, when the rector 
heroically flew in to the rescue, and with suf&cient 
tact only noticed her with a smile, and repeated his 
own question. 

" I fear not," I said. " I shrink from meetings 
where a number of people are brought together, 
not to learn something which they are themselves 
to do, but to give money to help others in a re- 
mote employmont. There is a great deal of talk- 
ing and excitement, and they go away home fan- 
cying they have been doing great things, when 
they have, in fact, only been stirring up some un- 
profitable feeling, and giving away a few shilHngs or 
pounds, when all their active feeHng and all the 
money they can spare is far more properly required 
at home. Charity is from person to person ; and it 
loses half, far more than half, its moral value when 



62 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

tlie giver is not brought into personal relation with 
those to whom he gives." 

'' Mr. Sutherland is general enough, and perhaps 
vague enough," was the answer. " Permit me to 
keep to my subject. The Bible Society in the 
course of each year disperses over the world hun- 
dreds of thousands of Bibles in many different lan- 
guages. The Word of God is sent into lands of 
Egyptian darlaiess, and souls at least may come to 
saving knowledge who else were lost without 
hope." 

I said coldly, I was sorry. I found my own 
duties far beyond my powers both of mind and 
money. I had only expressed my own feelings to 
explain my own conduct. I passed no opinion 
about others. 

" I fear you cannot defend yourself on so general 
a ground without reflecting upon others, Mr. Su- 
therland," he said. " I could understand you, in a 
manner sympathise with you, if you took the ground 
of objection so many good churchmen take, in 
declining to act with a mixed body ; but in this 
case, I fear, pardon me, I think you have some 
other reason. I do not fancy the objects of the 
society can entirely meet your approbation, or you 
would not have spoken so coldly." 

Miss Lennox was looking infinitely disagreeable ; 
the Hickmans as much concerned. The vulgar im- 
pertinence of such offensive personaHty disgusted me 
out of temper. Partly, too, I was annoyed at feel- 
ing he had heard, or she had been cunning enough to 



THE NEMESIS OF EAITH. 63 

see, I had some particular feeling on the point he- 
yond what I had spoken out. 

" Yes," I said, "it is true I have particular 
feehngs. I dishke societies generally; I would join 
in none of them. For your society in particular, as 
you insist on my telhng you, I think it is the very 
worst, with the establishment of which I have been 
acquainted. Considering all the heresies, the enor- 
mous crimes, the wickednesses, the astounding folhes 
which the Bible has been made to justify, and which 
its indiscriminate reading has suggested ; considering 
that it has been, indeed, the sword which our Lord 
said that he was sending ; that not the Devil himself 
could have invented an implement more potent to 
fill the hated world with hes, and blood, and fury ; I 
think, certainly, that to send hawkers over the world 
loaded with copies of this book, scattering it in all 
places among all persons — not teaching them to un- 
derstand it ; not standing, hke Moses, between that 
heavenly light and them ; but cramming it into their 
own hands as God's book, which He wrote, and they 
are to read, each for himself, and learn what they 
can for themselves — is the most culpable folly of 
which it is possible for man to be guilty." 

I had hardly spoken before I felt how wrong, how 
foolish, I had been ; and that a mere vulgar charla- 
tan, as I felt the man was, should have had the 
power to provoke me so ! I had said nothing which 
was not perfectly true, in fact ; but I ought to have 
known it was not true to the ignorant women who 
were hstening with eyes fixed and ears quivering, as 



64 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

if the earth was to open and swallow a blasphemer 
— What did they know of the world's melancholy 
history ? 

I saw Mr. 's eyes sparkle as he felt the tri- 
umph I was giving him, and his next word showed 
me it had been a preconcerted plan. 

" It is as 1 told you/' he said, turning away from 
me; "the_enemy is among us." The ladies ga- 
thered together for mutual protection in a comer. 

" What do you mean, Sir ? " I said ; '" this is 
most unwarrantable language. With what purpose 
did you come here ? " 

" Language ! Sir/' he sighed, " unwarrantable ! — 
I might ask you, Sir, what you mean — with what 
purpose you are come a wolf among these sheep ? 
They know you now, Mr. Sutherland. I knew what 
you were before, but your disguise had been too 
cunning for their eyes." 

Mrs. Hickman looked the picture of despair; 
quite wretched enough to disarm any anger I might 
feel at her. 

" Eeally, Madam," I said, rising, " if you have 
connived at this scene, you must be sufficiently 
punished at its results. I will not add to your pain 
by continuing my presence." The miserable young 
lady was flushed with exultation ; the rector had 
smoothed himself into an expression of meek tri- 
umph in a successful exorcism. I had been too 
much in the wrong myself to enable me to say then 
what might have to be said. I would wait till the 
next morning, which I supposed must bring my 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 65 

hostess's apology, and so bowed coldly and departed. 
The whole thing was so very insufferably bad that 
I could not even let myself think of what I was to do 
till I had considered it coolly. I went home and 
went to bed. The next morning came, but no note, 
and the day passed without any; and I began to 
feel, as a clergyman, in a most embarrassing posi- 
tion indeed. As a man, it was far too contemptible 
to affect me ; but as I thought it over, I saw that it 
was a seriously concerted design, whether from dishke 
or suspicion — what I do not know — to attack my 
position, and I had not heard the end of it. I called 
once or twice at the Hickmans, but they were not at 
home to me ; long faces began to show about the 
parish. It was evident tongues had been busy, and 
last Sunday the church was half empty. I was at a 
loss what to resolve upon, and had been thinking 
over various plans, when something came this even- 
ing winch is likely to resolve it all for me and save 
me the trouble. My folly has bred its consequence ; 
the word flies out and has a hfe of its own, and goes 
its own way and does its own work. Just now a { 
note was brought me, a very kind one, from the Bi- ■( 
shop, requesting me to take an early opportunity of 
calling on him : if I were not engaged, fixing to- j 
morrow morning. The sooner down the better with 
all nasty medicine, from the first magnesia draught | 
to the death finish. I shall present myself at the' 
first moment. I can have no doubt of the occa- 
sion. 



66 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 



LETTER X. 



Well, it is over, this interview; and a great deal 
else is over, I believe. He is a good man, a really 
good man, and a great one. Would to God I had 
been open with him before ! however, it is idle la- 
menting now. You shall hear : I found him alone 
of course ; I was shown into his study ; he was good 
enough to remember that the moments we are kept 
waiting for such interviews are not the very sweetest, 
and he joined me almost immediately. There was a 
grave kindness in his manner, which told me at once 
I had been right in looking for unpleasantness, and 
Ms good sense kept him from hanging on the edge 
of what was inevitable. He said he was very sorry, 
&c., and that I was not to regard what he was going 
to say to me as in the least official ; whether any- 
thing of that kind might have to follow, would 
depend very much on what he heard from me. 
In the mean time he wished to speak to me, as 
a friend, on some very serious matter which had been 
communicated to him. I bowed. He said he con- 
cluded from my manner that I was prepared for what 
was coming ; and then he went on, that I was said to 
' have used certain very incautious language, to say 
the least of it, at a private party in my parish, on the 
subject of the Bible Society. Perhaps in itself it 
was not a thing which he could formally notice. 
With the society in question he had as httle sym- 
pathy as I could have ; and he could easily under- 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 67 

stand that a young man of strong feelings might 
have been led to express himself with an unwise 
vehemence. But I must be aware how strongly in- 
cHned foolish people were to misunderstand and 
misrepresent, and how extremely cautious in my po- 
sition I was bound to be. He stopped there ; so, as 
well as I could, I thanked him for his kindness. I 
said I knew I had been very unwise, and, as nearly 
as I could remember them, I repeated the exact 
words which I had used. He answered very truly, 
with a sort of a smile, that words hke those, unex- 
plained, were quite as dangerous as anything I could 
find in the subject of them. But then, he went on, 
that this was not all he had to say to me. There 
was another matter, and a more serious one, he was 
sorry to tell me, of which he hoped I could give ex- 
planation. I had now been a year at my parish, and 
on all, except on one point, he was happy to tell me 
that if I had not exactly pleased my people, it was 
their fault, not mine. But a very serious complaint 
had been made to him on the nature of my sermons. 
He need not go into detail ; but he had been in- 
formed generally that during that entire season I 
had not preached a single one which might not have 
been a Socinian's. He did not charge me with hav- 
ing taught Socinianism ; on the contrary (and per- 
haps, as a general rule, T had done wisely), I had 
steadily avoided all doctrine; but that I had not 
said a word to prove that I held opinions which So- 
cinians did not hold, on the points on which they 
differed from us : neither on the incarnation nor on 



68 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

the atonement, as such, had I ever directly spoken. 
I was silent. " I presume it is true," he continued, 
" and from your present manner, that it has heen 
purposely so." "Yes," I said. He waited for me 
to go on. "If the Oathohc doctrine he true," I 
said ; he started ; " if the Oathohc doctrine he true," 
I repeated, " it is so overwhelming a mystery, that I 
cannot think of it without its crushing me. I can- 
not hring myself to speak in puhhc of it, before such a 
mixed assembly, or lend myself to the impiety (I can 
use no other word) with which the holiest secret of 
our faith is made common and profane. I think 
there is no one in my parish to whom, even in pri- 
vate, I should feel it possible to speak upon it." 

" Then you have not spoken in private either ? " 

" I have never been sought. If I had, however, I 
should probably have been still silent." 

"You said //"the Oathohc doctrine be true — you 
observed that I remarked your words, and you 
desired that I should do so, from your repeating 
them. Am I to suppose that you have any doubts 
about it ? " 

" My lord," I said, " you were good enough to 
tell me you were speaking to me as a friend, and I 
will show you my thanks by being entirely open 
with you. Many times I have been on the point of 
volunteering a confession to you ; I have only been 
withheld by an unmanly fear ; a doubt of how you 
might receive it. However, I will speak now. I 
owe my situation to your goodness, and perhaps 
I have hitherto made a bad return to you. Now I 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 69 

put myself without reserve in your hands, and what- 
ever you think I ought to do, I will do. Never, 
either by word or action, until this if, have I given 
reason to living man to suppose I did question 
it. But that in these times every serious person 
should not in his heart have felt some difficulty with 
the doctrines of the incarnation, I cannot believe. 
We are not as we were. When Christianity was 
first pubhshed, the imagination of mankind pre- 
sented the relation of heaven to earth very dif- 
ferently from what it does now. When heaven was 
one place, and earth was another, imaginatively co- 
extensive, extended under it — with, in every nation, 
a belief in a constant intercourse between them, sha- 
dowing itself out in legends of God's appearing upon 
earth, and mortals elevated among gods — it cannot but 
have seemed far simpler then that this earth should 
have been the scene of a mystery so tremendous, than 
it can now seem to us, knowing what we know of this 
little earth's infinite insignificance. But as this is but 
an im^aginative difficulty^ so it has not been on this, 
but rather on the moral side of the doctrine, that I have 
found my own deepest perplexity. I will be candid. 
I believe God is a just God, rewarding and punish- 
ing us exactly as we act well or ill. I beheve that 
such reward and punishment follow necessarily from 
His will as revealed in natural law, as well as in the 
Bible. I beheve that as the highest justice is the 
highest mercy, so He is a merciful God. That the 
guilty should suffer the measure of penalty which 
their guilt has incurred, is justice. What we call 



70 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

mercy is not the remission of this, but rather the 
remission of the extremity of the sentence attached 
to the act, when we find something in the nature of 
the causes which led to the act, which hghtens tlie 
moral guilt of the agent. That each should have 
his exact due is Just — is the best for himself. That 
the consequence of his guilt should be transferred 
i from him to one who is innocent (although that in- 
nocent one be himself willing to accept it), whatever 
else it be, is not justice. We are mocking the word 
I when we call it such. If I am to use the woid Justice 
in any sense at all which human feeling attaches to 
• it, then to^permit^uch transfer is but infinitely d^^- 
j ening the wrong, and seconding the first fault by 
'greaFer inJusTtce, I am speaking only of the doc- 
trine of the atonement in its human aspect, and as 
we are to learn anything from it of the divine 
nature or of human duty. To suppose that by our 
disobedience we have taken something away from 
God, in the loss of which He sufiers, for which He 
requires satisfaction, and that this satisfaction has 
been made to Him by the cross sacrifice (as if 
\ doing wrong were incurring a debt to Him, which 
/ somehow must be paid, though it matters not by 
I whom), is so infinitely derogatory to His majesty, to 
every idea which I can form of His nature, that to 
beHeve it in any such sense as this confounds and 
overwhelms me. In the strength of my own soul, 
for myself, at least, I would say boldly, rather let 
me bear the consequences of my own acts myself, 
even if it be eternal vengeance, and God requires it, 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 71 

than allow the shadow of my sin to fall upon the 
innocent." 

I stopped. He said, quietly, '' You have more to 
say, go on." 

I continued. " I know that in early ages men 
did form degraded notions of the Almighty, painting 
Him like themselves, extreme only in all their pas- 
sions : they thought He could be as lightly irritated 
as themselves, and that they could appease His anger 
by wretched offerings of innocent animals. From 
such a feeling as this to the sense of the value of a 
holy and spotless hfe and death- from the sacrifice 
of an animal to that of a saint — is a step forward out 
of superstition quite immeasurable. That between 
the earnest conviction of partial sight, and the 
strong metaphors of vehement minds, the sacrificial 
language should have been transferred onwards from 
one to the other, seems natural to me ; perhaps in- 
evitable. On the other hand, through all history 
we find the bitter fact that mankind can only be 
persuaded to accept the best gifts which Heaven 
sends them, in persecuting and destroying those 
who are charged to be their bearers. Poetry and 
romance shadow out the same truth as the stern and 
mournful rule under which Heaven is pleased to 
hold us, that men must pay their best to it as the 
price of what they receive. I understand this — 
I can understand, as I can conceive, that as the 
minds of men grew out into larger mould, these two 
ideas united into one, in such a doctrine as that 
which we are now taught to hold. 



pm^' 



72 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

" But if I am to believe that in plain prose it is 
true as a single fact — not which happens always, but 
which has happened once for all — that before the 
world was made it was predetermined so, and we 
must obey the Bible, and allow that this is justice 

I and tjbgis is mercy; then in awe and perplexity I 
turn away from the Bible, not knowing, if it use our 
words in a sense so different, so utterly different, 
from any which we attach to them, what may not be 
the mystical meaning of any or every verse and 
fragment of it. It has but employed the words 
which men use to mock and deceive them. A re- 
velation ! Oh, no ! no revelation ; only rendering 

\ the hard hfe- enigma tenfold harder. I thank you 
very much for bearing with me. I will but say, in 
conclusion, that I do not disbeheve that in some 
mysterious transcendental sense, as involved in the 
system of the entire universe, with so vast an arc 
that no faculty of man can apprehend its curve, 
that in some such sense the Cathohc doctrine of the 
atonement may be true. But a doctrine out of 
which, with our reason, our feehng, our logic, I at 
least can gather any practical instruction for man- 
kind — any deeper appreciation of the attributes of 
God, any deeper love for Him, any stimulant to- 
wards our own obedience — such a doctrine I cannot 
find it. I bury what I am to think of it in the 
deepest corner of my own heart, where myself I fear 
to look." 

It was said and over. And oh ! what a reHef I 
felt. A weight which had been sinking me to the 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 73 

earth was taken off. I was an honest man again, with 
nothing more to conceal, and follow now what might, 
I had done my duty, and I was not responsible. 

He said my convictions seemed deeply thought — ^ 
were they altogether new ? formed since the time of ' 
my taking orders ? 

I said I would he frank with him again. I had 
had very great difficulty in taking orders. At that 
time my feehngs were far less defined than they 
were at present ; hut even then I had anxiously de- 
sired an explanation with him, and it had only been 
the advice of others, (which I had never sufficiently 
regretted having followed,) which had deterred me. 
I was told, and I partly heheved it, that my un- 
comfortable feehngs were the result of want of em- 
ployment, of my mind being so entirely flung in 
upon itself; that they were but symptoms of a dis- 
ease which required only exercise for its cure. I 
determined, for myself, that I would submit abso- 
lutely, in all I said and did ; in no way hint a doubt 
even to myself; and, in, I beheve, a spirit of real 
humihty, I did endeavour with all my heart to see 
the truth as the Church sees it. It had pleased 
God to govern my mind in His way, not in mine. 
I had bitterly repented my orders, for I felt my 
uneasiness not pass away, but deepen into convic- 
tion. I was now more grateful for this opportunity 
which he had given me of speaking out, than any 
words could tell him. I had not come prepared to 
make so full a confession ; but I had been forced on 
by an impulse which I could not, if I had wished, 

E 



74 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

control. And now I threw myself on his hands, to 
do with me as he thought right. 

He said nothing for some time. He sat silent. 
His thoughts appeared to have left me, and travelled 
off on some abstracted interest. I had no more to 
speak. I did not interrupt him. After perhaps a 
quarter of an hour, he seemed to make an effort to 
collect himself, and said sharply, " Of course I have 
hut one duty." But the tone showed it was to him- 
self he was speaking, not to me. Presently he turned 
to me, and said with a voice of mournful kindness, 
"May God help you, my son! It is a terrible trial. 
Only He who is pleased to send such temptation 
can give you strength to bear it. You shall have my 
prayers . . . and my blessing . . . not as 
your bishop, Markham. I cannot bless you as your 
bishop. But as an old man and an old friend, who 
can still love you and feel for you, yes, such a bless- 
ing you shall not want, my poor, poor boy." There 
were tears in his eyes. I was prepared for any 
thing but this ; for ny rebuke, for any harshness. 
I could not contain myself. I burst into tears too. 
I caught his hand and kissed it. He did not take 
it from me; but his eyes were seeking heaven and 
God, and his Hps were fast moving. Was it for me, 
was it for himself, that he was praying ? I knew not, 
I might not, I would not, hear. But his overflowing 
heart poured out its secrets. Broken words fell in 
upon my ears which 1 could not choose but catch. 
He was praying to be taken away from the evil day, 
that last dreadful time of terror, when the Devil 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 75 

should have the power for a season over hearts not 
sealed with the Devil's mark, when even the elect 
would be tempted to deny their Lord. 

Well I cannot tell you more of this, how kind he 
was, how much I was overcome. He thanked me 
for my candour, as he called it, wliile he allowed how 
bitterly it distressed — it embarrassed him : once there 
was a passionate burst. " You, too, of whom I had 
heard so much, and formed so many hopes ... I 
knew more of you than you supposed, and sympa- 
thised more with you ; yours is a mind of no common 
order, and I had looked, yes I had looked to you, I 
had hoped that you, with a knowledge of the power 
of that spirit of antichrist which is now working in 
this world, so different from anything which we knew, 
or now at our age can ever learn, that you might have 
been a chosen champion of the Church. God's will be 
done — and our duty; of course I cannot (I would 
not if I could) take any pubhc steps in consequence 
of what you have disclosed to me; and I am sure 
you yourself are too high-minded to take advantage 
of your situation or mine ; what I advise you, you 
will do. You cannot remain where you are ; give 
your mind time, and try other scenes ; go travel, see 
what men are; see what all men are or must become 
^o allow their faith to gHde out of their hearts, as 
you have allowed yours ; and you may yet by God's 
grace. ..... I cannot tell — I have little hopes, 

they have all gone; yes, there is not one, not one in 
all these many years which I have seen upon the 
earth, not one man of more than common power who 

E 2 



76 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

lias been contented to abide in the old ways." He 
was half speaking to himself, half to me. He took 
down a book from his shelves ; it was the confession 
of the Vicar of Savoy ; he saw I knew it. '' This does 
not content you," he said; "you cannot — you are 
too honest far, to take liis terms for yours, and con- 
tinue on in your position as he held on in his. No ! 
you will go ; I will find some one to supply your 
place in your absence, and you will be generous in 
what you will leave him. If at the end of three 
years your mind is not changed, I tliink you will 
leave the service for ever wliich is not yours, and you 
will not shrink from what you will lose by it." 

I answered at once my benefice was in his hands ; 
what changes my mind might pass through I could 
not tell; but that if — if I ever came to feel that I 
had been walking in a dehrious dream, and that the 
old way was the true way, it would be with far too 
deep humiliation to permit me ever again to dare to 
become its minister. A few words, he did not mean 
of common-place advice, against over haste, against 
imprudence, was all the weak opposition which he 
made to this. My hving is resigned — my employ- 
/ ment gone. I am again free — again happy; and all 
~ the poor and paltry net- work in which I was entan- 
gled, the weak intrigues which hke the flies in the 
summer irritate far worse than more serious evils, 
I have escaped them all; and if the kind good 
people who have brought all this about, can find any 
miserable pleasure in what they will suppose their 
victory ; each one of the thousand pluming himself or 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 77 

herself on the real secret — the exact story — the only 
true, full, perfect and sufficient account of Mr. 
Sutherland's disgrace, let them have it, I can afford 
it; they gain their pleasure, I do but lose, what per- 
haps it is our best credit to be without, the world's 
good opinion. All I really grieve for is my father. 
He, they, all of them, will never forgive me; the old 
feelings, or far worse than the old, will flow back 
now into the old channel, and my small measure of 
affection will turn sour in the thunder storm, and 
curdle into contempt. It must be so, I shall go 
away and they will forget me when they do not see 
me. Perhaps if I hve beyond their eyes, and my 
vexing presence is not by to iiTitate, I may be at 

least endured — tolerated and in after 

years when what now they most value has proved its 
hollowness; when the world passes by them and 
through them, and they learn at last that they cannot 
take itmth them, cannot gain from it one kind smile 
they do not pay for; that the world with all its 
power, splendour, caresses, promises, for all the love 
we waste upon it, cannot love us, for it is heartless ; 

perhaps then But I will not dwell upon 

so melancholy a picture. 

M. 



Tt is an easy way to get rid of the difficulties of 
this world, to say, in the off-hand way in which it is 
commonly said, that if a man cannot get along with 
it, it is all his own fault ; that the world is a look- 
ing-glass which gives every man his own image; 



78 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

that he has no one to blame but himself; that he is 
not active enough ; that he is not sensible enough ; 
not enough of any thing that he should be, and too 
much of every thing he should not be ; that he ex- 
pects what he cannot find, and does not choose to 
be contented with what he can ; anyhow to shift the 
responsibility of his failure off Nature's shoulders 
upon his own. And yet I think Nature, if she in- 
terests herself much about her children, must often 
feel that, like the miserable Frankenstein, with her 
experimenting among the elements of humanity, she 
I has brought beings into existence who have no busi- 

I ness here ; who can do none of her work, and 
endure none of her favours ; whose hfe is only suf- 
fering ; and whose action is one long protest against 

«^ the ill foresight which flung them into conscious- 

I cannot understand why the worst sentence which 
could be pronounced against the worst man that 
ever lived, should be nothing more than that it were 
I better for him if he had never been bom. Surely 
s it were better for half mankind if they had never 
been born, considering the use they make of them- 
selves ; and then the stage would be left clear for the 
other half, and both sides would be such infinite 
gaiuers. The vicious, the fooHsh, and the pas- 
j sionate, would escape a service which is torture to 
I them; and the others would be spared the nuisance 
of such disagreeable companionship. There is 
already a fear the earth is growing overpeopled, and 
this matter might really be taken into consideration. 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 79 

Mridsv ayav should be the maxim, and, in future, 
no colonists should be sent into this world who have 
too much or too little of any thing. 

The class of persons who get on best here, who 
understand nature, and whom nature understands, 
are the good sort of prudent people, who push their / 
way along the beaten track, neither loving very! 
strongly, nor loved very strongly. Allowing the 
heart to have a voice when it does not plead against 
understanding, they do not exactly love their neigh- 
bours, but they keep on broad terms of reason- 
able good-will with them ; liking such as do not 
stand painfully in their way, and sympathising as far 
as they can feel sympathy with all sensible persons 
like themselves. They form their attachments, con- 
nubial and otherwise, for mutual convenience and 
comfort ; and in the routine of profitable occupa- 
tion, intermittent like night and day with their 
hours of pleasant relaxation, they pass through their 
seventy years with no rest disturbed by any more 
painful emotion than what might arise from an 
infirm digestion, or a doubtful pecuniary speculation, i 
They love, they fear, they hope, they pray, they 
fulfil all their duties to earth and heaven on the 
broad principles of moral economy; and having 
walked as the world judges them with unblemished 
integrity, and Hved prudently within their incomes, 
money income and soul income, and never permitted 
themselves in extravagance in either, they entertain 
well-grounded hopes of continued prosperity beyond 
the grave. And most likely they will find them 



80 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

realised; they liave tlie monopoly of this world's good 
— they form the world's law and the world's opinions, 
as the favourites and the exponents of the will of the 
higher Powers ; and " coming in no misfortune like 
other folk, neither being plagued like other men," 
wherever they are they will be still themselves ; and 
carrying with them the elements of their prosperity 
in their own moderation, it is difficult to conceive a 
state of being in which they could be less happy than 
they are. 

Why need any other sort be compelled into 
existence, besides these ? What use are fools ? 
What use are bad people ? What use are dreamers 
and enthusiasts ? Surely it cannot be necessary to 
have them as foils to the excellence of the others, 
and to indulge these in Pharisaic self- laudations 
that they are not as the pubhcans. I know that 
a holy father of the Church defines one mode of 
i the happiness of the blessed to be the contempla- 
tion of the torments of the damned; and I know 
that those who succeed in Hfe do now and then 
make pleasant comparisons of themselves with their 
less fortunate neighbours : but one would hope, if 
they were asked, they would not say it was essen- 
tial to them ; and, unless it be, it is a large price to 
pay for what could be dispensed with. I should 
be sorry to think there was so much favouritism in 
Providential government; and I would sooner be- 
heve there is some impracticable necessity in the 
nature of things than accept the holy father's de- 
finition, and allow him to have seen clearly into 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 81 

the conditions of happiness either upon earth or 
in heaven. 

Yet, whatever be the cause why things are as 
they are, still to be conscious of nothing is bet- 
ter than to be conscious only of pain; and to 
do nothing than to do what entails pain. So that 
whether this earth be all, and this little hfe-spark 
of existence flicker but its small time and then 
expire for ever; or whether there be, as we are 
taught and we beheve, some mysterious fuel which 
will still feed it through the silence of eternity; 
doubtless it would be better for half of us never to 
have been at all. Les mechants, Jean Jacques says, 
sont tres emharrassants, both in this world and in 
the next; and if we are compelled to doubt so 
much what just destination to assign to the wicked, 
infinitely harder it is to know what to do with 
natures which fail from excess of what we must 
call rather a kind of good than of evil, and from a 
dehcacy of sensitive organization, to which their 
moral energy of character bears too small propor- 
tion; men who are unable to escape from them- 
selves into healthy activity ; because they want the |\ 
strength to carve out their own independent road, | 
and the beaten roads offend their sensibihty; and 
are therefore engaged their hves long in a hopeless 
struggle with elements too strong for them ; falling 
down from failure to failure, and either yielding at 
last and surrendering their souls to what they de- 
spise, or else lying down to die of despair over a 
barren past and a future without a prospect. 

E 3 



82 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

Whether it was a misfortune to himself or to the 
world that Markham Sutherland was horn into it; 
heyond question it was a very great misfortune both 
to himself and to his family that his lot was cast 
among them. Upright and conscientious, their 
tempers, as we have partly seen, were of the broad, 
sohd, sturdy kind; which, as they never know the 
I meaning of a refined difficulty, so never experience 
I yny which it is not easy for them to overcome. 

He was quite right in his anticipation of the way in 
which this last break-down would be received ; they 
did not mean to be unkind, but as it was clear the 
success by which they were accustomed to measure 
their fellow creatures now never could be his, and 
as he was the only one of a large family who had 
failed to find it, their minds being all constructed 
on a common type, to which his formed the only 
exception, their affections circulated round and 
round among themselves, and he lay outside the 
circle which was complete without him. You can- 
not reason people into loving those whom they are 
not drawn to love; they cannot reason themselves 
into it ; and there are some contrarieties of temper 
which are too strong even for the obhgations of 
relationship. Unhappily, too, they let themselves 
despise Markham, and where the baneful glance of 
contempt has once fallen, love is for ever banished. 
The feehng was not returned, although, perhaps, it 
might as deservedly have been so. Markham still 
saw much in them to love; still struggled, perhaps, 
to make up their short- comings by his own fulness. 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 83 

His mind was wider than theirs, little as they 
thought it was ; and he could understand and make 
allowance for the unkindness which was wounding 
him, while they could make none for his disap- 
pointing their hopes, and being so unlike themselves. 
Well, he was quite wise in deciding to keep aw^ay 
from them. It would have been better, perhaps, if 
he had gone at once abroad ; but he was anxious, he 
told me, to spend some time at least in severer study 
than hitherto he had been able to pursue, and try if 
he could not calm his mind, instead of drowning it in 
the excitement of motion. He was going to try what ., 

philosophy would do for him, and at least for a time rK^o%^^'^ 
it appeared to answer. " One of two things one 
must have," he wrote to me, " either sufficient re- 
spect for oneself to take whatever comes, ceqiio ^ 
animo, even it be what is called damnation, I 
mean so great an honouring of oneself, or con- 
fidence in oneself, that nothing external can affect 

one , or else, sufficient faith in an all-powerfulj „, 

•external Being, of quahties which ensure His pre- 
"sefving us on both sides of the grave. It is a 
Question, I think, whether we can have both ; but, 
though we may go without houses, carpets, horses, 
carriages, one of these two we cannot go without, 
under penalty of madness or suicide, or, the com- 
mon fate of mankind, of becoming machines for the 
decomposing of dinners." He proposed the ques- 
tion fairly to himself; it remained to be seen what 
he would make of it. I confess I had serious mis- 
givings. I am not going to follow his pilgrimage 



fq 



84 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

along the road with any detail ; externally his hfe 

had now, for the next year, Httle variety, and a few 

specimens of the thoughts he left behind him will 

he enough to indicate the direction, and generally 

I the sort of view of nature, of the world, of human 

[ Hfe, and its conditions, which are likely to he the 

I goal of men who go astray from the old way as he 

\ went. 



Why is it thought so very wicked to he an un- 
behever ? Eather, why is it assumed that no one 
can have difficulties unless he be wicked ? Be- 
cause an anathema upon unbelief has been ap- 
pended as a guardian of the creed. It is one way, 
and doubtless a very pohtic way, of maintaining the 
creed, this of anathema. When everything may be 
lost unless one holds a particular behef, and nothing 
except vulgar love of truth can induce one into 
questioning it, common prudence points out the 
safe course ; but really it is but a vulgar evidence, 
this of anathema. 



Genuine belief ended with persecution. As soon 
as it was felt that to punish a man for maintaining 
an independent opinion was shocking and unjust, so 
soon a doubt had entered whether the faith estab- 
lished was unquestionably true. The theory of 
persecution is complete. If it be necessary for the 
existence of society to put a man to death who has 
a monomania for murdering bodies, or to exile him 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 85 

for stealing what supports tliem ; infinitely more neces- 
sary is it to put to death, or send into exile, or to 
imprison those whom we know to he destroying weak 
men's souls, or stealing from them the dearest of all 
treasures. It is hecause — whatever we choose to say 
— it is hecause we do not know, we are not sure 
they are doing all this mischief; and we shrink from 
the responsihihty of acting upon a douht. 



Sometimes it is a spot of sunHght travelUng over 
a dark ground — sometimes it is the hlack shadow of 
a single cloud, the one speck in the great ocean of 
light ; one wonders which, after all, human Hfe is. 



Where was ever the teacher who has not felt, at 
least, if not said, " No man cometh to the Father 
except through me ? " 



The end of all culture is, that we may he ahle to 
sustain ourselves in a spiritual atmosphere as the 
birds do in the air. This is what philosophy 
teaches. Men sustained by religion, take a creed 
for a substitute, and hang, or beheve that they are 
hanging, suspended by a golden chain from the 
throne of God. It is happy for mankind that they 
are able to do this. For mankind — not for philoso- 
phers. I confess it sickens me to see our philosophic 
savans, as they call themselves, swinging in this 
way mid- air among the precipices of hfe, examining 



v,,^ 



86 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

a flower here, a rock there; analysing them and 
cutting them in pieces, and discovering the com- 
bination of elements which went to their making, 
and calling this wisdom. What is man the wiser 
or the happier lor knowing how the air-plants feed, 
or how many centuries the flint- stone was in form- 
ing, unless the knowledge of them can he linked on 
to humanity, and elucidate for us some of our hard 
moral mysteries. 



In Christianity, as in every thing else which men 
have thrown out of themselves, there is the strangest 
mixture of what is most noble with what is most 

I shrink from the only word. A 

man is bom into the world — a real man — such a 
one as it has never seen ; he hves a hfe consistently 
the very highest; his wisdom is the calm earnest 
voice of humanity ; to the worldly and the common- 
place so exasperating, as forcing upon them their 
own worthlessness — to the good so admirable that 
every other faculty is absorbed in wonder. The 
one killed him. The other said, this is too good to 
be a man — this is God. His calm and simple life 
was not startHng enough for their eager imagina- 
tion ; acts of mercy and kindness were not enough, 
unless they were beyond the power of man. To 
cure by ordinary means the bruised body, to hft 
again with deep sympathy of heart the sinking 
sinner, was not enough. He must speak with power 
to matter as well as mind; eject diseases and eject 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. B7 

devils with command. The means of ordinary birth, 
to the oriental conception of uncleanness, were too 
impure for such as he, and one so holy could never . 
dissolve in the vulgai' corruption of the grave. 

Yet to save his example, to give reahty to his 
sufferings, he was a man nevertheless. In him, as 
philosophy came in to incorporate the first imagina- 
tion, was the fulness of humanity as well as the 
fulness of the Godhead. And out of this strange ; 
mixture they composed a being whose life is with- \ 
out instruction, whose example is still nothing, I 
whose trial is but a helpless perplexity. The noble 
image of theman is effaced, is destroyed. Instead 
of a man to love and to follow, we have a man-god 
to worship. From being the example of devotion, he 
is its object; the rehgion of Christ ended with his 
life, and left us instead but the Christian rehgion. 
The afflictions which by an act of his own will, as 
being himself the source of all power, he inflicts 
upon himself — what afihctions are these? The 
trial of humanity, which gives dignity to the per- 
severing endurance through life for truth's sake, and 
which gives death its nobleness, is the constancy of > 
the mind to good, with uncei^tainty of the issue, \ 
when it does but feel its duty, and does not know \ 
the consequences. The conviction of the martyr 
that the stake is the gate of Paradise, diminishes the 
dignity of the suffering in proportion to its strength. 
If it be absolute certainty, the trial is absolutely! 
nothing. And that all- wise Being who knew all, 
who himself willed, erected, determined all, what 



88 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

could the worst earthly suffering he to him to whom 
all the gates which close our knowledge were shining 
crystal? What trial, what difficulty was it all to 
him? His temptation is a mockery. His patience, 
meekness, humiUty, it is hut trifling with words, 
unless he was a man, and hut a man. 

And yet what does it not say on the other side 
for mankind, that the hfe of one good man, which 
had nothing, nothing hut its goodness to recom- 
mend it, should have struck so deep into the heart 
of the race that for eighteen hundred years they 
have seen in that life something so far ahove them 
that they will not claim a kindred origin with him 
who lived it. And while they have scarcely bet- 
tered in their own practice, yet stand, and ever since 
have stood, self- condemned, in acknowledging in 
spite of themselves that such goodness alone is 
divine. This is their ideal, their highest. 



People canvas up and down the value and utility 
of Christianity, and none of them seem to see that it 
was the common channel towards which all the 
great streams of thought in the old world were tend- 
ing, and that in some form or other when they came 
to unite it must have been. That it crystalHzed 
round a particular person may have been an acci- 
dent ; but in its essence, as soon as the widening 
intercourse of the nations forced the Jewish mind 
into contact with the Indian and the Persian atid 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 89 

the Grecian, such a rehgion was absolutely in- 
evitable. 

It was the development of Judaism in being the U Af^tt^, 
fulfilment of the sacrificial theory, and the last and 
purest conception of a personal God lying close 
above the world, watching, guiding, directing, inter- 
fering. Its object was no longer the narrow one of 
the temporal interests of a small people. The 
chrysalis had burst its shell, and the presiding care 
extended to all mankind, caring not now for bodies 
only but for souls. It was the development of Par- ^ ^ ^^ 
sism in settUng finally the vast question of the ' '^^ '-^- - * - ^''- - - 
double principle, the position of the evil spirit, his 
history, and the method of his defeat ; while Zoroas- 
ter's doctrine of a future state was now for the first 
time explained and justified ; and his invisible world 
of angels and spirits, and the hierarchies of the 
seven heavens, were brought in subjection to the 
same one God of the Jews. 

It was the development of the speculative Greek 
philosophy of the school of Plato, of the doctrine of 
the Spirit, and the mysterious Trinity, the e v ^a,] ttov, 
t he word or intellect becoming active in the primal 
Being; while, lastly, the Hindoo doctrine of the in- 
carnation is the uniting element in which the other 
three combine, and which interpenetrates them with 1: VVw^tl^s^ 
an awful majesty which singly they had not known. 

So these four streams uniting formed into an 
enormous system, comprehending all which each 
was seeking for, and bringing it all down home, 
close to earth, human, direct, and tangible, and sup- 




90 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

plying mankind with full measure of that spiritual 
support with which only minds most highly dis- 
cipUned can afford to dispense. 



[These fragments require no comment. They are 
their own. I will but add one more, one which 
I think really remarkable in itself.] 



The source of all superstition is the fear of having 
offended God, the sense of something within our- 
selves which we call sin. Sin, in its popular and 
therefore most substantial sense, means the having 
done something to gratify ourselves which we knew, 
or might have known, was displeasing to God. It 
depends, therefore, for its essence on the doer having 
had the power of acting otherwise than he did. 
When there is no such power there is no sin. / Now 
let us examine this. In reflecting upon our own 
actions we find that they arise from the determi- 
nation of our will, as we call the ultimate moral 
principle of action, upon some object. Wlien we 
will, we will something, not nothing. Objects at- 
tract or repel the will by the appearance of some- 
thing in themselves either desirable or undesirable. 
And in every action, if analysed, the will is found to 
have been determined by the presence of the greatest 
degree of desirableness on the side towards which it 
has been determined. It is ahke self- contradictory 
and contrary to experience, that a man of two goods 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 91 

should choose the lesser, knowing it at the time to 
be the lesser. Observe, I say, at the time of action. 
We are complex, and therefore, in our natural state, 
inconsistent, beings, and the opinion of this hour 
need not be the opinion of the next. It may be 
different before the temptation appear; it may return 
to be different after the temptation is passed ; the 
nearness or distance of objects may alter their rela- 
tive magnitude, or appetite or passion may obscure 
the reflecting power, and give a temporary impulsive 
force to a particular side of our nature. But, uni- 
formly, given a particular condition of a man's nature, 
and given a number of possible courses, his action is 
as^necessarily determined into the course best corre- 
sponding to that condition, as a bar of steel suspended 
between two magnets is determined towards the 
most powerful. It may go reluctantly, for it will 
still feel the attraction of the weaker magnet, but it 
will still obey the strongest, and must obey. What \ 
we call knowing a man's character^ is knowing how | 
he will act in such and such conditions. The better 
we know him the more surely we can prophecy. If 
we know him perfectly, we are certain. 

So that it appears that at the stage first removed 
from the action, we cannot find what we called the 
necessary condition of sin. It is not there; and we 
must look for it" a step higher among the causes 
which determine the conditions under which the 
man acts. Here we find the power of motives de- 
pends on the character, or the want of charac- 
ter. If no character be formed, they will in- 



03 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

fluence according to the temporary preponderance 
of this or that part of the nature ; if there he formed 
character, on the conditions, again, which have 
formed it, on past hahits, and therefore on past 
actions. Go hack, therefore, upon these, and we 
are again in the same way referred higher and still 
higher, until we arrive at the first condition, the 
/ natural powfixajaifaculties with which the man has 

[ heen sent into the world. 

Therefore, while we find such endless differences 
hetween the actions of different men under the same 
temptations, or of the same man at different times, 
! we shall yet he unahle to find any link of the chain 
undetermined hy"ffie a,ction of the outward circum- 
stance on the inner law ; or any point where we can 
say a power lay in the individual will of choosing 
either of two courses, — in other words, to discover 
^n. Actions are governed hy motives. The power 
of motives depends on character, and character on 
the original facilities and the^training which they 
have received from the men or things among which 
they have heen hred. 

. > Sin, therefore, as commonly understood, is a 

r chimera. 

If you ask me why, then, conscience so impera- 
tively declares that it is real? I answer, con- 
science declares nothing of the kind. We are con- 
scious simply of what we do, and of what is done 
to us. The judgment may come in to pass sen- 
tence ; hut the judgment is formed on instruction 
and experience, and may he as wrong in this matter 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 93 

as in any other: being trained in the ordinary theory 
of morals, it will and must judge according to it ; 
but it does not follow that it must be right, any 
more than if it be trained in a particular theory of 
pohtics, and judges according to that, it must be 
right. Men obey an appetite under present temp- 
tation, to obey which they have before learned will be 
injurious to them, and which, after the indulgence, 
they again learn has been injurious to them ; but 
which, at the time, they either expected would, in their 
case, remit its natural penalty, or else, about which, 
being bhnded by their feehngs, they never thought at 
all. Looking back on their past state of mind, and 
finding it the same as that to which they have 
returned when the passions have ceased to work, it 
seems to them that they knew better, and might 
have done otherwise. They wish they had. They 
feel they have hurt themselves, and imagine they 
have broken a law. It is true they have broken the 
higher law, but not in the way which they fancy, but 
by obeying the lower law, which at the time was the 
stronger. Our instinct has outrun our theory in this 
matter ; for while we still insist upon free will and 
sin, we make allowance for individuals who have 
gone wrong, on the very ground of provocation, of 
temptation, of bad education, of infirm character. 
By and by philosophy will follow, and so at last we 
may hope for a true theory of morals. It is curious 
to watch, in the liistory of religious behefs, the gra- 
dual elimination of this monster of moral evil. The 
first state of mankind is^he unreflecting stat^* The 



94 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

nature is undeveloped, looking neither before nor 
after ; it acts on the impulse of the moment, and is 
troubled with no weary retrospect, nor with any notions 
of a remote future which present conduct can affect ; 
and knowing neither good nor evil, better or worse, 
^it does simply what it desires, and is happy in it 
It is the state analogous to the early childhood of 
each of us, and is represented in the common theory 
of Paradise — the state of innocence. 

But men had to grow as we grew. Their passions 
developed rapidly, their minds slowly; but fast enough 
to allow them in the interval of passion, to reflect 
upon themselves, to generalise, and form^xperience ; 
and, acquiring thus rudimental notions of laws from 
observing the tendency of actions, men went through 
what is called the Fall ; and obtained that know- 
ledge of good and evil which Schiller calls "' ein 
Eiesen Schritt der Menscheit." Feeling instinc- 
tively that the laws under which they were, were 
not made by themselves, but that a power was 
round and over them greater than themselves, they 
formed the notion of a lawgiver, whom they con- 
ceived they could please by obedience to the best 
they knew, and make angry by following the worse. 
It is an old remark, that as men are, such they paint 
their gods ; and as in themselves the passionate, or 
demonic natm^e, long preponderated, so the gods 
they worshipped were demons like themselves, jea- 
lous, capricious, exacting, revengeful, the figures 
which fill the old mythologies, and appear partly in 
the Old Testament. They feared them as they feared' 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 95 

the powerM of tlieir own race, and sought to propi- 
tiate them by similar offerings and services. 

Go on, and now we find ourselves on a third 
stage ; but now fast rising into a clearing atmosphere. 
The absolute worth of goodness is seen as distinct 
from power ; such beings as these demon gods could 
not be the highest beings. Good and evil could not 
coexist in one Supreme ; absolutely different in nature 
they could not have a common origin; the moral 
world is bipolar, and we have duahsm, the two prin- 
ciples, coeternal, coequal. 

By and by, again, the horizon widens. The ultimate 
identity of might and right glimmers out fully in the 
Zenda Vesta as the stars come out above the moun- 
tains when we chmb out of the mist of the valleys. 
The evil spirit is no longer the absolute independent 
Ahriman ; but Ahriman and Ormuzd are but each a 
dependent spirit ; and an awful formless, boundless 
figure, the eternal, the ilHmitable, looms out from the 
abyss behind them, presently to degrade still farther 
the falling Ahriman into a mere permitted Satan, 
finally to be destroyed. 

Such a position could not long continue : after two 
hundred years of vague efforts after Pantheism, whicli 
would have leapt the chasm, not bridged it, out 
came the gTcat doctrine of the atonement, the final 
defeat of \hQ power of sin; the last stage before the 
dissolution of the idea. 

Finally rises philosophy, which after a few mon- 
strous efforts from Calvin to Leibnitz to reconcile 
contradictions and form a theodice, comes out boldly 



96 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

in Spinozism to declare the impossibility of the ex- 
istence of a power antagonistic to God ; and defining 
the perfection of man's nature, as the condition under 
jwhich it has fullest action and freest enjoyment of all 
its powers, sets this as a moral ideal before us, toward 
Iwhich we shall train our moral efforts as the artist 
trains his artistic efforts towards his ideal. The suc- 
cess is various, as the faculties and conditions which 
God has given are various; but the spectre which 
ihaunted the conscience is gone. Our failures are 
Terrors, not crimes — nature's disciphne with which 
God teaches us ; and as httle violations of his law, or 
rendering jis gmlty in His eyes, as the artist's early 
blunders, or even ultimate and entire failures, are 
laying store of guilt on him. 



li 



It could not last with Markham, this philosophis- 
ing, I knew it could not. It was but the working off 
in a sort of moral fermentation of the strong corrup- 
tion with which his mind had become impregnated. 
Markham's heart had more in it than blood, and his 
nature was either too weak or else too genuine to 
find its cravings satisfied, when he had resolved the 
gTeat hfe of humanity, these six thousand years of 
man's long wrestle with the angel of destiny, into 
a cold system in which he could calculate the ebb 
and flow as on the tables of a tide. Doubtless, 
some such way of reading it there is; but wo to him 
to whom it is given to read it so ; more than man 
ever was, he must be, or far less, not such a one 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 97 

at any rate as poor Markham. The spell broke; 
one day I had a letter from him of the old sort, of 
which his heart, not his head, had had the making. 
He was unwell, and the philosophising spirit which 
had possessed him, thinking a failing tenement no 
longer worth its occupying, had flung it off again to 
its old owner. Whether it was that the unclean 
thing was but making a brief absence for some pro- 
cess of sweeping and garnishing to take place against 
a fuller possession, whatever it was, it was gone ; 
and he himself, for the better comforting of soul and 
l^ipjy,, was going off to spend a winter at Como, He , rrVr-A 
was going alone ; one of his sisters offered to ac- '^ ^ 
company him, but it was an offer of duty rather ■ 
than affection ; and as those very dutiful people are 
so punctiHously scrupulous in keeping both sides of 
the equation equal, and as, poor fellow, he felt he 
would have to pay for what he received on one side 
by a yet further reduction of the little stock he had 
remaining upon the other, he thought it would be 
better for himself, for her and all of them, to hold 
himself under his own keeping and trouble them no 
further. He was not ill enough to be alarmed or to 
alarm us; .... so only the seven devils were kept 
away, which seemed the only danger. 

Well, Markham went. Over the few centre pages 
of his life, while this fermenting was at its worst, 
we have till now been turning; what follows wilt 
complete it from its beginning, and we shall see 
what he was before, and whither, by and by, he was 
determined. Scepticism, hke wisdom, springs out 

F 



98 THE NEMESIS OF PAITH. 

in full panoply only from the brain of a god, and 
it is little profit to see an idea in its growth, un- 
less we track its seed to the power which sowed it. 
Among other matters with which he entertained 
himself in this Italian winter was a retrospective 
sketch, which to me, as I read it, appeared of a value 
quite unspeakable as an analysis of a process through 
which in these last years so many minds besides 
his own have been slowly and silently devolv- 
ing. I had intended to mutilate it, but that each 
page pleaded with so much earnestness to be the 
one that I was to choose, that I could only satisfy all 
by taking all. It is not long, it was broken off 
abruptly, we shall see by and by how broken; but 
it is carried down to a point, when we can link it 
on with no too serious aposiopesis to those first 
letters which have already caused in us feelings 
which I will not endeavour to analyse, lest I find 
in myself more sympathy with them, than I wish 
to think I feel. 





THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 99 



CONFESSIONS OF A SCEPTIC. 

That there is something very odd about this life of 
ours, that it is a kind of Egyptian bondage, where 
a daily tale of bricks must be given in, yet where we 
have no straw given us wherewith to burn them, is 
a very old confession indeed. We cry for some- 
thing we cannot find; we cannot satisfy ourselves 
with what we do find, and there is more than cant 
in that yearning after a better land of promise, as 
all men know when they are once driven in upon 
themselves and compelled to be serious. Every 
pleasure palls, every employment possible for us is 
in the end vanity and disappointment — the highest 
employment most of all. We start with enthusiasm 
— out we go each of us to our task in all the bright- 
ness of sunrise, and hope beats along our pulses ; 
we believe the world has no blanks except to 
cowards, and we find, at last, that, as far as we our- 
selves are concerned, it has no prizes; we sicken 
over the endless unprofitableness of labour most 
when we have most succeeded, and when the time 
comes for us to lay down our tools we cast them 
from us with the bitter aching sense, that it were 
better for us if it had been all a dream. We seem 
to know either too much or too little of ourselves— 
too much, for we feel that we are better than we can 

r 2 



100 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

accomplish; too little, for, if we have done any good 
at all, it has been as we were servants of a system 
ftoo vast for us to comprehend. We get along 
^through life happily between clouds and sunshine, 
forgetting ourselves in our employments or our 
amusements, and so long as we can lose our con- 
} sciousness in activity we can struggle on to the end. 
But when the end comes, when the hfe is lived and 
done, and stands there face to face with us ; or if 
the heart is weak, and the spell breaks too soon, as 
if the strange master- worker has no longer any work 
to offer us, and turns us off" to idleness and to our- 
selves; in the silence then our hearts hft up their 
voices, and cry out they can find no rest here, 
no home. Neither pleasure, nor rank, nor money, 
nor success in hfe, as it is called, have satisfied 
or can satisfy ; and either earth has nothing at all 
which answers to our cravings, or else it is some- 
thing different from all these, which we have missed 
finding — this peace which passes understanding — 
and from which in the heyday of hope we had turned 
away, as lacking the meretricious charm which then 
seemed most alluring. 

I am not sermonizing of Eehgion, or of God, 
or of Heaven, at least not directly. These are often 
but the catchwords on the hps of the vulgarly dis- 
appointed; which, hke Plato's Oephalus, they grasp 
at as earthly pleasures ghde out of their hands; 
not from any genuine heart or love for them, but 
because they are words which seem to have a mean- 
ing — shadows which fill up the blank when all else 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 101 

is gone away. But there is one strong direction 
into which the needle of our being, when left to 
itself, is for ever determined, which is more than 
a catchword, which in the falsest heart of all remains 
still desperately genuine, the one last reahty of which 
universal instinct is assured. 

When my eyes wander down the marble pages 
on the walls of the church aisles, or when I stray 
among the moss-grown stones lying there in their 
long grassy couches in the churchyard, and spell 
out upon them the groupings of the fast crumbling 
names, there I find the talisman. It is home. Far 
round the earth as their life callings may have scat- 
tered men, here is their treasure, for here their heart 
has been. They have gone away to live; they 
come home to die, to lay their dust in their fathers' 
sepulcre, and resign their consciousness in the 
same spot where first it broke into being. Whe- 
ther it be that here are their first dearest recol- 
lections of innocent happiness; whether the same 
fair group which once laughed around the old fire- 
side would gather in together and tie up again the 
broken links in the long home where they shall 
never part again; whether there be some strange 
instinct, which compels all men back to the scene 
of their birth, to lay their bodies down in the 
same church which first received them, and where 
they muttered their first prayer; whatever be the 
cause — like those cunning Indian weapons which, 
projected from the hand, fly up their long arc into 
the air, yet when their force is spent glide back 



102 THE NEMESIS OE FAITH. 

to the spot from whicli they were flung — the spent 
life travellers carry back their bodies to the old 
starting point of home. 

The fish struggle back to their native rivers; 
the passage birds to the old woods where they made 
their first adventure on the wings which since have 
borne them round the world. The dying eagle 
drags his feeble flight to his own eyrie, and men 
toil-worn and careworn gather back from town and 
city, from battle-field or commerce mart, and fling 
ofl^" the load where they first began to bear it. 
Home — yes, home is the one perfectly pure earthly 
instinct which we have. We call heaven our home, 
as the best name we know to give it. So strong 
is this craving in us, that, when cross fortune has 
condemned the body to a distant resting-place, yet 
the name is written on the cenotaph in the old 
place, as if only choosing to be remembered in the 
scene of its own most dear remembrance. Oh, most 
touching are these monuments ! Sermons more 
eloquent were never heard inside the church walls 
than may be read there. Whether those hopes, 
written there so confidently, of after risings and 
blessed meetings beyond the grave, are any more 
than the "perhaps" with which we try to lighten 
up its gloom, and there be indeed that waking for 
which they are waiting there so silently, or whether 
these few years be the whole they are compelled to 
bear of personal existence, and all which once 
was is reborn again in other forms which are not 
there any more, still are those marble stones the 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 103 

most touching witness of the temper of the human 
heart, the hfe in death protesting against the Hfe 
which was lived. 

Nor, I think, shall we long wonder or have far to 
look for the causes of so wide a feeling, if we turn 
from the death side to the life side, and see what it 
has been to us even in the middle of the very busi- 
ness itself of living. For as it is in this atmosphere 
that all our sweetest, because most innocent child 
memories are embosomed, so all our life along, 
when the world but knows us as men of pleasure or 
men of business, when externally we seem to have 
taken our places in professions, and are no longer 
single beings, but integral parts of the large social 
being ; at home, when we come home, we lay aside 
our mask and drop our tools, and are no longer 
lawyers, sailors, soldiers, statesmen, clergymen, but 
only men. We fall again into our most human 
relations, which, after all, are the whole of what 
belongs to us as we are ourselves, and alone have 
the key-note of our hearts. There our skill, if skill 
we have, is exercised with real gladness on home 
subjects. We are witty if it be so, not for ap- 
plause but for affection. We paint our fathers' 
or our sisters' faces, if so lies our gift, because 
we love them ; the jnechanic's genius comes out in 
playthings for the little brothers, and we cease the 
struggle in the race of the world, and give our 
hearts leave and leisure to love. No wonder the 
scene and all about it is so dear to us. How beau- 
tiful to turn back the life page to those old winter 
firesides, when the apple hoards were opened, and 



104 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

the best old wine came up out of its sawdust, and 
the boys came back from school to tell long stories 
of their fagging labours in the brief month of so 
dear respite, or still longer of the day's adventures 
and the hair-breadth escapes of larks and black- 
birds. The merry laugh at the evening game; 
the admiring wonder of the young children woke 
up from their first sleep to see their elder sisters 
dressed out in smiles and splendour for the ball 
at the next town. It may seem strange to say 
things like these have any character of religion ; 
and yet I sometimes think they are themselves reli- 
gion itself, forming, as they do, the very integral 
groups in such among our life pictures as have been 
painted in with colours of real purity. Even of the 
very things which we most search for in the busi- 
ness of life, we must go back to home to find the 
healthiest types. The loudest shouts of the world's 
applause give us but a faint shadow of the pride 
we drew from father's and sister's smiles, when we 
came back with our first school prize at the first 
holidays. The wildest pleasures of after-hfe are 
nothing like so sweet as the old game, the old 
dance, old Christmas, with its mummers and its 
mistletoe, and the kitchen saturnalia. Nay, per- 
haps, even the cloistered saint, who is drawing a 
long life of penitential austerity to a close, and 
through the crystal gates of death is gazing already 
on the meadows of Paradise, may look back with 
awe at the feeling which even now he cannot imi- 
tate, over his first prayer at his mother's side in the 
old church at home. 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 105 

Yes, there we all turn our eyes at last; the world's 
glitter for a time blinds us ; hut with the first serious 
thought the old notes come echoing back again. It 
is as if God, knowing the weary temptations, the 
hollow emptiness of the hfe which yet we needs must 
lead, had ordained our first years for the laying in 
an unconscious stock of sweet and blessed thoughts 
to feed us along our way. We talk much of the 
religious discipline of our schools, and moral training 
and mind developing, and what more we will of the 
words without meaning, the hollow verbiage of our 
written and spoken thoughts about ourselves ; yet I ; 
question whether the home of childhood has not/ 
more to do with rehgion than all the teachers and 
the teaching, and the huge unfathomed folios. 
Look back and think of it, and we cannot separate 
the life we lived ffom our religion, nor our religion 
from our life. They wind in and in together, the 
gold and silver threads interlacing through the 
warp ; and the whole forms together then in one fair 
image of what after-hfe might and ought to be, and 
what it never is. No idle, careless, thoughtless 
man, so long as he persists in being what he is, 
can endure the thought of home any more than he 
can endure the thought of God. At his first 
return to himself, it is the first thought which God 
sends . . . well for him if it be not too late. If 
we could read the diary of suicide, and trace the 
struggles of the bleeding heart, in suspense yet 
between the desire and its execution, yet drawing 
nearer and ever nearer, and gazing with more fixed 

F 3 



106 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

intensity on the grave as the end of its sorrow, 
ah, will not the one fair thought then on which 
it will last rest he the green memories of home! 
The last deep warning note either filling up and 
finishing the measure of despair with its madden- 
ing loveliness, or else, if there be one spot not 
utterly wasted and destroyed where life and love can 
yet take root and grow, once more to quicken there, 
and win hack for earth its child again. 

The world had its Golden Age — its Paradise — 
and religion, which is the world's heart, clings to 
its memory. Beautiful it lies there — on the far 
horizon of the past — the sunset which shall, by 
and by, be the sunrise of Heaven. Yes, and God 
has given us each our own Paradise, our own old 
I childhood, over which the old glories linger — to 
which our own hearts cling, as all we have ever 

known of Heaven upon earth And there, as 

all earth's weary wayfarers turn back their toil-jaded 
eyes, so do the poor speculators, one of whom is this 
writer, whose thoughts have gone astray, who has 
been sent out hke the raven from the window of 
the ark, and flown to and fro over the ocean of 
speculation, finding no place for his soul to rest, no 
pause for his aching wings, turn back in thought, 
at least, to that old time of peace — that village 
church — that child- faith — which, once lost, is never 
^.^gained again — strange mystery — is never gained 
' again — with sad and weary longing ! Ah ! you 
who look with cold eyes on such a one, and hft 
them up to Heaven, and thank God you are not 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 107 

such as he, — and call him hard names, and think 
of him as of one who is forsaking a cross, and pur- 
suing unlawful indulgence, and deserving all good 
men's reproach! Ah! could you see down below 
his heart's surface, could you count the tears stream- 
ing down his cheeks, as out through some church- door 
into the street come pealing the old familiar notes, 
and the old psalms which he cannot sing, the 
chaunted creed which is no longer his creed, and 
yet to part with which was worse agony than to lose 
his dearest friend ; ah ! you would deal him lighter 
measure. What, is not his cup bitter enough, but 
that all the good, whose kindness at least, whose 
sympathy and sorrow, whose prayers he might have 
hoped for, that these must turn away from him, as 
from an offence, as from a thing forbid? — that he 
must tread the wine-press alone, calling no God- 
fearing man his friend; and this, too, with the sure 
knowledge that coldness, least of all, he is deserving, 
for God knows it is no pleasant task wliich has been 
laid upon him ! Well, be it so. You cannot take 
my heart from me. You cannot take away my 
memory. I will not say, would to God you 
could, although it is through these that I am 
wounded, and, if these nerves were killed, I should 
know pain no longer. No, cost me what it will, 
I will struggle back, and reproduce for myself 
those old scenes where then I lived — that old faith 
which, then, alas! I could believe — which made 
all my happiness, so long as any happiness was pos- 
sible to me. 



108 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

You will never have perfect men, Plato says, till 
you have perfect circumstances. Perhaps a true 
saying ! — hut, till the philosopher is horn who can 
tell us what circumstances are perfect, a sufficiently 
speculative one. At any rate, one finds strange 
enough results — often the very hest — coming up 
out of conditions the most unpromising. Such a 
hundle of odd contradictions we human heings are, 
that perhaps full as many repellent as attracting 
influences are acquired, hefore we can give our hearts 
to what is right. Yet, as a whole, my own child- 
hood found as much favour as any one can fairly 
hope for ; and, as I look hack, I can see few things 
which I could wish had heen otherwise. I say this, 
neither in shame for what I am not, nor as refusing- 
credit for what I am. I am concerned only with 
the facts — what I was, and what has resulted out of 
me. We were a religious family — I mean a soher, 
serious family — not enthusiastically devotional — 
very little good comes to children from over-pas- 
sionate straining in this matter. Grown men, who 
have sinned, and who have known their sin, whose 
hearts have shed themselves in tears of hlood, who 
can feel the fulness of the language of religion from 
their own experience of their faihngs and their 
helplessness, and have heard the voice of God speak- 
ing to them in their despair, they may he enthu- 
siastic if they will — pour themselves out in long 
prayers, and hymns, and psalms, and have His 
name for ever on their lips — they may, because it 
will he real with them. But it is not so with child- 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 109 

ren ; their young bright spirits know Httle yet of 
the burden of life which is over them. They have 
hardly yet sinned — far less awakened out of sin — 
and it is ill wisdom, even if it be possible, to train 
their conscience into precocious sensitiveness. Long 
devotions are a weariness to healthy children. If, 
unhappily, they have been made unhealthy — if they 
have been taught to look into themselves, and made 
to imagine themselves miserable and fallen, and 
every moment exciting God's anger, and so need 
these long devotions — their premature sensibility 
will exhaust itself over comparative trifles; and, 
by and by, when the real occasion comes, they will 
find that, like people who talk of common things 
in superlatives, their imagination will have wasted 
what will then be really needed. Their present 
state will explain to themselves the unreality of their 
former state ; but the heart will have used out its 
power, and thoughts, which have been made unreal, 
by an unreal use of them, will be unreal still, and 
for ever. This was not our case. We, happily, 
were never catechised about our feelings; and so 
our feelings, shght as they were, were always 
genuine. Eeligion, with us, was to do our duty ; 
that is, to say our lessons every day ; to say our 
prayers morning and evening ; to give up as many 
as we could of our own wishes for one another ; 
and to earn good marks, which, though but slips of 
blue paper, were found, at the end of the month, to 
be good current paper of sterling value, and con- 
vertible into sixpences, which we stored up to make 



110 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

presents to our kind governess, and kinder aunt. 
Our own little prayers we said always by ourselves, 
at our bedside ; the Lord's Prayer out loud, and 
small extempore ones, which we kept under a whis- 
per, because they were commonly small intercessions 
for some dear friends ; which we shrunk from letting 
those friends hear ; for fear they might be grateful to 
us, and that would be stealing so much of our plea- 
sure in ourselves. Then, besides these, we had family 
prayers in the school-room, which were far from 
being so pleasant or so easy to attend to. They 
were read out of a book by the governess, and we 
did not know them ; they were in long words which 
we did not understand; I always counted them 
among the unpleasant duties, and I longed for them 
to be over. Two long words particularly, that came 
in the middle, I used to watch for, as I knew then 
that half the time was past. If I had been asked 
whether I did not know that this was very disre- 
spectful, and that I ought to have had the same 
reverence in the school-room as in the silence of 
my own sleeping place, I suppose I should have 
answered quite satisfactorily ; but I should not have 
answered truly. Whatever may be the case with 
men, children, at any rate, only feel ; they do not 
know; I did not feel the same, and that was 
enough. I had said what I wanted ; this was a 
form which I might respect generally, but could not 
enter into. Well, and after that came the Psalms and 
chapters. The Psalms we used to read verse and 
verse ; and here again I was very imperfectly what I 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. Ill 

ought to have been. I could make nothing of them 
read in this way ; I could not understand how anybody- 
could ; and very early then, I made an obsei^vation 
which I have never seen reason to alter, that nothing 
short of special interference with miracle will enable 
any heads ever to understand them, into which they 
have been beaten in the popular English fashion. I 
got a general reverence for them, as for the rest of the 
service, because they were treated reverentially by those 
I reverenced; but, for anything they taught me, they 
might have been kept in the old Hebrew : far bet- 
ter, indeed, as I should not then, as I do now, have 
known them all by heart, finding still their meaning 
sealed to me under the trodden famiUarity of sound. 
To this day I can make nothing of the Psalms, 
except when I see a verse or two quoted, and the 
meaning so held out before me, or else when I read 
them in a less familiar language. Yet even so they 
will translate into the old jingle, and the evil repro- 
duces itself. It fared no better with the Prophecies 
and Epistles. But all this was compensated by the 
stories in the Old and New Testament, which were 
the most intense delight to me. With a kind of 
half- fear I was doing something wrong, I used to 
transform my person into those I read about. I was 
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. Joseph I liked best of all ; 
I believe because he had such a pretty coat, and 
because he was good and ill-treated. Benjamin 
never took my fancy; everything went too well 
with him. I was always sorry at leaving off at the 
ends of chapters; I should have liked better to 



J 12 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

have had the stories complete ; but I believed it was 
all right ; that there was virtue in verses and chap- 
ters, as in everything else in the Bible. Whatever 
I may think at present of all this, and of the good 
and ill effects on the whole of our mechanical treat- 
ment of the Bible ; still, I am sure that it is in this 
' early um-easoning reverence that the secret lies of 
I our all believing it as we do ; and that it is here, 
\ and not in authenticities, and evidences, and miracles, 
and prophecy fulfilments, that our faith is rooted. 
We start on our reasonings with foregone conclu- 
sions ; and well for us that we do so, or they would 
lead us certainly a very different road. 

Well, so went on our lives. The horizon of our Httle 
home valley was not very wide ; and our moral horizon 
was no wider; yet inside them lay all our world. We 
visited little ; and what company came was always 
company ; not nice pleasant friends, but a set of 
alien beings, only made to be looked at when we 
came in to dessert, and hardly known to be our fel- 
low-creatures. They might have come from the 
stars for all we cared ; and they took notice of us 
in ways we did not like in the least. The people 
of the village, our own family, and the servants, 
were all we recognised as people. They were the 
inhabitants of our own world. In the school-room 
lay our duties ; outside, in the garden, or in the 
copses beyond, where the brook ran and the violets 
grew, was our pleasure place, while round it all lay the 
great wood with its dark trees and gloomy under- 
paths, into which we gazed with a kind of awful 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 113 

horror, as the ghost and robber and fairy-haunted 
edge of the world which closed it in. We were hke 
an old camp in the wilderness, on some Arabian oasis, 
in wliich we hved as the old patriarchs Hved. We 
had our father, our mother, brothers, sisters ; and the 
old faces of the old servants, and the sheep and the 
cows in the meadow, and the birds upon the trees, 
and the poultry in the bushes, and the sky, and 
God who lived in it ; and that was all. And what 
a beautiful all ! My delight, in the long summer 
afternoons, was to lie stretched out upon the grass, 
watching the thin white clouds floating up so high 
there in the deep aether, and wondering how far it 
was from their edge up to the blue, where God was. 
I have often thought it is part of the inner 
system of this earth that each one of us should 
repeat over again in his own experience the spi- 
ritual condition of each of its antecedent eras ; and 
surely we at home in this way repeated over again 
the old patriarchal era in all its richness. Here 
were we in our httle earth. There above was our 
Eather in heaven — not so far away. He heard us 
when we prayed to Him — His eyes were ever upon 
us — He called us His children — He loved us and 
cared for us. The imagination is too true to dis- 
criminate great distances of time. God had been 
down on this earth of ours ; and talked to the patri- 
archs and to Moses. They were very old; but then 
papa was very old too, and I used to look at his 
silver hair, and wonder whether he had ever seen 
Abraham — whether he perhaps had seen God. Nay 



114 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

once I remember, in an odd confusion of the name 
of father, the thought crossing me that he might 
be something very high indeed. 

Well, to such children as we were, Sunday was a 
very intense dehght. First of all, there were no 
lessons ; then we had our best clothes ; we had no 
employment which we liked, that Sunday interfered 
with. We might not dig in the gardens ; but we 
did not complain of that if we might still look at 
the flowers and smell them. Every thing was at 
rest about us. The school-room was shut up. The 
family dined between churches, so that that day 
we were admitted to the parlour, and going to 
church was delightful. The day was God's own 
particular day, and church was God's own house. 
He was really there we were told, though I rather 
wondered we did not see him ; and to go there was 
the happiest thing we knew. I thought the ser- 
vices rather long, and I did not much understand 
them ; but I always liked all except the sermon. I 
liked evening service best because it was shorter; 
but I remember thinking it was not wisely shortened : 
and I would gladly have compounded to take back 
litany and communion to get off sermon. It was 
long words again ; and I felt towards it much as I 
did to school-room prayers. As Goethe says of 
Gretchen, when we were at church it was — 

" Halb Kinderspiel halb Grott im Herzen." 

Yet we loved God in our child's fashion, and it was 
the more delightful that neither feehng absorbed us. 



THE KEMESIS OF FAITH. 115 

The singing was very pleasant ; but best of all it 
was "when a poor, too-curious robin had strayed into 
the aisles, and went wandering in alarmed per- 
plexity up and down among the long arches, beat- 
ing its little beak against the window glass, or 
alighting on the shoulder of one of the little 
painted cherubims, with its shrill note lending a 
momentary voice to the stone harp which hung 
stringless in those angel-fingers. After church we 
said our catechism, at which I was always best able 
to answer my duty towards my neighbour; but 
neither I nor my sister, who said it with me, could 
ever make much of our duty towards God. We had 
our own feelings, which this somehow interfered 
with ; it was not in easy enough language, and, as 
we knew the routine of it very tolerably, we took 
turns to begin, that we might escape. Yet there 
was always this compensation, that whichever got 
off that had the two long answers. But best of all ] 
were the Sunday evenings, — alas, how unlike our | 
experience of later Sunday evenings, — for one of 
two delights was always sure to me; either dear 

Miss H read me the Fairy Queen, which then 

was only second to the Bible with me, or else the 
older ones of the party would play with us young 
ones at animal, vegetable, and mineral — that first 
intrusion of philosophy into the holy place ; which 
by and by would play work there we little enough 
dreamed of then. Infinite was the glee with which 
we strained our memory for the oddest stories, and 
the oddest things in them, to be hunted down the 



116 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

scent which the questions drew from us. The head 
of the floating axe was a great favourite; so was 
Jael's nail ; or, harder still, the lordly dish in which 
the butter was presented. Kind elder ones, as then 
we thought, to trifle so with us ; but my since ex- 
perience of Sunday evenings in England has taught 
me that they were not so altogether losers, and I 
would gladly, as I grew up, have exchanged my 
devout sermon readings for the smallest game with 
the smallest child. Unhappily we fell, after a time, 
under another regime ; we lost our games ; my 
Fairy Queen, too, was sent to sleep upon her shelf; 
a profane poet was thought unfit for Sunday's 
serious perusing. In truth the allegory was not 
thought much of; Una was a fair damsel in dis- 
tress — the lion a real, good, grand, noble lion, such 
as we saw at the menagerie; how I hated that 
Sansfoy for killing him. I am tempted to say here 
how serious a mistake we grown Protestants make 
with these modern Sundays of ours. I was after 
taught no book not strictly religious might be read. 
Sermons ! who can go on reading sermons ? I was 
called naughty if I went to sleep ; and, at that time, 
"Wharton's Deathbed Scenes" was the only book 
in our library which sweetened the dull medicine 
with a story. I learnt these by heart, and then I 
was destitute; and my only comfort in thinking 
that heaven was all Sunday was the hope that at 
least there would be no long winter evenings there. 
Grown people coquet with their consciences so 
ridiculously in this matter. They will talk and 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 11.7 

think all day of the foolishest of follies; young- 
ladies will wear their best bonnets, thinking only 
how pretty they look in them : but to read a book 
of foolishness, or to act out the gay dress into a 
pleasure party, is sin. Some people will read 
letters, but not write them ; but generally both are 
permitted, as well as newspapers. A magazine is a 
debateable point — questionable ; though many de- 
grees better than a book. A book, if you will have 
a book, must be a volume of sermons ; or, at least, 
of commentaries. But to return to my healthy 
young Sundays ; they were all bright. It seemed 
as if on Sunday it never rained ; and one way or 
another, at least at home, it has never lost its calm, 
quiet beauty. The flowers wear a less business-like 
colour; the fields catch the colour of our spirits, 
and seem to lie in obedient repose. I cannot think 
the cattle do not feel it is not as other days ; the 
lambs have a kind of going to church frisk about 
them ; your dog, on every other day your faithful- 
lest of companions, lies out before the hall-door, 
and never thinks of following you till after evening 
service; and your horse, if you have him out in 
the morning, looks a sermon full of puritan re- 
proaches at you. The sacredness of Sunday is 
stamped on the soil of England, and in the heart 
of every Englishman ; and all this by the old Sun- 
days we remember of the first ten years of our lives. 
So it was that, without any notion of the mystery 
of Christianity, I grew up in the intensest reverence 
for it ; the more intense because I had no notion of 



118 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

its meaning. I cannot say what the Bible was not 
to me. I remember once in a fit of passionate 
bravado, when I was required to do something I did 
not like, saying " I swear I will not." I meant 
nothing except a great expression of my resolution. 
My sister told me I had taken God's name in vain ; 
and my conscience burnt in what I had done upon 
my heart as if with a branding iron, and there lies 
its memory — unefFaced and ineffaceable. 

Alas, alas, for the change ! as I write, I seem for 
a moment to feel the old pulsations : but it is all 
gone away — gone like a dream in the mornings 
gone with the- fairy-peopled world where then I 
thought we had our dwelling. " The things that I 
have felt, I now can feel no more;" when God 
gave them to me I felt them. He gave them — 
he has taken them away. The child is not as the 
man, and heaven hes all round our lives; in our 
young years we gambol upon its shores, and gather 
images from the shapes of light that sparkle there ; 
and those light beings hover round us in our after 
wanderings, to hold our souls true in faith : that 
as the child was so in the end the man may be ; 
and better far than that. 

I am not going to trouble further the old vexed 
question of home and school education; but as I 
have been speaking of the religious sensibilities 
which form themselves at home, and as I have found 
that home and the thoughts connected with it are the 
elements out of which these are wrought, and the 
food upon which they feed; so I am sure that thesQ 



I 




I 



*" THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 119 

sensibilities are the strongest among those who re- 
main longest in this home nursery garden, and, 
whatever may become of the others, their roots at 
least will never strike in a foreign soil. Character, 
vigour, independence, these may best form when 
there is most occasion for independent action, and 
the boy thrown upon himself in the hard world 
atmosphere of school, having to make his way and 
push himself and take his own position, will be 
better formed by far, perhaps, to elbow along in after- 
life by practice of elbowing among schoolboys. 
And, till we know something (at present we know 
nothing at all) of the form after which it is most 
God's will man should most shape himself, it is idle 
to lay down laws for the hest way of forming him. 
Here I am concerned with religious sensibility, which 
unquestionably is weakened in every school as it is 
in the world. It leads to no results does religion, in 
the first, any more than in the last ; the forms of reli- 
gion may be kept up, the outside praying and the 
chapel going, some instruction too for decency's 
sake ; Greek Testament classes, article classes and 
such like. But I will appeal to every boy's expe- 
rience, whether all this has anything to do with his 
real religion, or whether it looks to much advantage 
by the side of the prayer-book his mother gave him, 
or the Bible his sisters subscribed to buy for him. 
I will ask him whether the tenderest form in which 
tiis divinity is taught at school, has not seemed to 
him worldly and irreverent; whether there, it is not 
lessons, business, discipline — not love, heart and 




120 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

pleasure ; and wbetlier passing from the school Sun- 
day to the first Sunday at home in holidays has not 
been passing from earth into heaven. The older we 
grow, the more surely we each feel our own sincere 
experience to be the type of all sincere experience, 
and I make my appeal without any fear at all. 

The same feelings, if I know anything 

of human nature, we shall all recognise ; the same 
voice in which God has spoken to our hearts. Once 
for all, religion cannot be taught io boys. — Not till the 
man is formed, not till the mind has been drawn out 
of itself and forced to read, with its own eyes and not 
with the eyes of books, the world and the men that 
move and live in it; not till the strangeness of their 
own nature has broken upon them, till they have 
looked fairly at this strange scene on earth here, 
"this huge stage," and all its shows on "which the 
stars with silent influence are commenting," not till 
they have felt the meaning of history, have come to 
feel that in very deed the actions of which they read, 
the books in which they read them, were done and 
made by beings in all points like themselves — in the 
same trials, mysteries and temptations — not till then 
can religion in its awfulness come out before men's 
minds as a thing to be thought of; not till the 
question is asked will reason accept the answer. It 
is the last, not the first, scene of education. It 
cannot, try how you will, it cannot come before ; till 
then it can be but a feeling — and so with this writer ; 
God knows whether all his teaching weakened his 
feeling : it certainly could not deepen it — yet at any' 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 121 

rate, ill obeyed as it was, the old faith he had learnt 
to love still held its place next his heart, till the 
time came for the change when the reason must 
assume its own responsibilities. I will step lightly- 
over this period, long as it was ; I had been trained 
in rigid Protestantism — Faber on the Prophecies, 
Southey's Book of the Church, had been the pet 
books into which I had been directed. The Devil 
was at the bottom, and the Pope, the unquestionable 
Antichrist, very near him; and if possible an im- 
provement on his ugliness. And the fulfilment, the 
exact fulfilment, of the prophecies, in the matter, for 
example, of the scarlet robe, the forbidding to marry^ 
and the meat fasting, had always struck me, not as 
proofs of the truth of Christianity — Heaven knows 
I never thought of that — but as the most wonderful in- 
stances of the exactness with which the courses of the 
world were marked out for it. 

So I was at about sixteen. Young boys take 
what they are told with readiest acquiescence, and 
difficulties are easily put away by a healthy mind 
as temptations of the devil. Cruelties said to have 
been committed by God's order in the Old Testa- 
ment never struck me as cruelties ; I glided on with- 
out notice over the massacres of women and children, 
much as good sensible people nowadays slide 
over the sufferings of '" the masses;" condensing 
them into the one short word, and dismissing them 

as briefly as the lips dismiss the sound 

If misgivings ever for a moment arose, I had but to 
remember they were idolaters; and what was too bad 

G 



122 THE NEMESIS OF EAITH. 

for a people so wicked as to be that ? I remember 
thinking it odd that I should be taught to admire 
Hector, and^neas, and Ulysses, and so many of them, 
when all they were idolaters too. What had we to 
do with the wisdom of Cicero, when he was as great 
a sinner as these Canaanites ? But T readily laid 
the blame on the defects of my own understanding, 
I was sure it was all right; and, though I read Hume 
and Gibbon, I hated them cordially, only doubting 
whether they were greater fools or greater knaves. 
Why an all-knowing God, too, should re- 
quire us to pray to Him, should threaten to punish us 
if we did not, when He knew what we wanted better 
than we knew ourselves; why we should put our 
wishes into words when we even felt ourselves how im- 
perfectly words expressed our feelings, and He could 
know them without; nay, more, why, when as I began 
to be taught we could not pray without He gave us 
Himself the wish to pray, and the words to pray in. He 
yet should be angry with us when we did not do it, 
when He had not made us wish — this, too, seemed 
very odd to me, . . . . but I dismissed it all as it came, 
as my own fault, and most likely as very wrong. 

Just as I was leaving off being a boy, we fell 
under a strong Catholicising influence at home, and 
I used to hear things which were strange enough to 
my ear. Faber was put away out of my studies ; 
Newton was forbidden; and Davison, that I thought 
so dry and dull, put in his place. Transubstantiation 
was talked of before me as more than possible ; 
celibacy of the clergy and fasting on the fast days 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 123 

were not only not wrong, but the very thing most 
needful .... our own dinners indeed did not suffer 
diminution .... but even to raise the question was 
sufficiently alarming, and I sat by in silence, listen- 
ing with the strangest sensations. The martyrdom 
of Oranmer had always been a great favourite with 
me; the miracle of the unconsumed heart was a 
real miracle ; at least I had been told so. The ful- 
filled prophecies about the Pope were real Scripture 
prophecies, of which I thought the verification almost 
terribly exact; and, what was worse, the interpreta- 
tion was made sacred to me by early association . . . . 
and how to unlearn all this ? I believe I may date 
from this point the first disturbance my mind expe- 
rienced, and, however long I went on laying the 
blame upon myself, I never recovered it. I said to 
myself, if this miracle was not a miracle, how do I 
know there ever were miracles ? This was easily 
answered, because one sort were in Scripture, 
and the other only in Southey's book. But as to 
fulfilment of prophecy, if this was not fulfilment, 
then what was ? we could never be sure of any of 
it. Davison was no help; for his double sense was 
the wrong sort of double — double-minded. I went 
to the New Testament for " old prophecies fulfilled 
there, and I was still more bewildered ; for, in no one 
case that I could find, would it have been possible 
to conceive without the interpretation that there had 
been any prophecy at all intended. So I was forced 
altogether to give up prophecy till more inspiration 

came to explain it for us 

G 2 



124 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

Alas ! liow little we understand the strange mys- 
tery of the heart. Thoughts come and go — float 
across our minds like the cloud shadows on a sunny 
day; the sun follows out, and no track is seen upon 
the earth when they have passed — all is bright as 
before. But the heart lies out under the breath of 
Providence like the prepared mirror of the photo- 
genic draughtsman ; the figure falls there, it rests 
but a few moments, and then passes away, and no 
line is seen; but the rays have eaten in and left a 

form which can never be effaced By and 

by the acid touches it, and there lies the image, 
full and faithful as the hand could paint it. The 
first doubt of the affection of one who is dear to us, 
how angrily we spurn it from us, how we despise 
and hate ourselves for entertaining a thought so 
detestable; one stone crumbled off a battlement, 
how httle it affects our sense of its strength, our 
faith in its duration. Yet the same cause which 
flung down that one may fling down another and 
another, and what can begin to perish will at last 
perish all. I am not speaking of Christianity as it 
is in the eternal purpose of Almighty God ; but of 
that image, that spiritual copy of it, which grows up 
in the human microcosm. The first is older than the 
universe — is coeval with its Maker; but the second 
is frail as the being in whom, it is formed. 

Wo to the unlucky man who as a child is 
taught, even as a portion of his creed, what his 
grown reason must forswear. Faith endures no 
barking of the surface ; it is a fair, delicate plant 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 125 

transported out of Paradise into an alien garden, 
v/here surest care alone can foster it. But wound 
the tenderest shoot — 'but break away one single 
flower, and though it linger on for years, feeding 
upon stimulants and struggling through a languish- 
ing vitality, it has had its death-blow ; the blighted 
juices fly trembling back into the heart, never to 
venture out again. 

Nevertheless the mind of a young man is very 
plastic. As personal affection lies at the root of 
our first opinions, so the influence of persons whom 
we love and venerate is for a long time paramount ; 
and, by a natural necessity, a mind falling in its 
growth under the influence of a great man, great 
alike in genius and in character, assumes the im- 
print such a man will fix upon it, and most imitates 
what it most admires. Only wider experience 
flings us back upon ourselves ; the experience 
which shows us that men who, while they unite all 
the greatest qualities in greatest measure, may yet 
be as various in opinion as in the variety of their 
gifts — as various as the million varieties of beautiful 
objects with which God has ornamented the earth. 
Painful, indeed, is the moment when this first breaks 
upon us. It is easy to be decided so long as we 
feel so sure that all goodness is on our side ; and 
only badness, moral badness, or else folly, can take 
the other; but how terrible becomes the alternative 
when we know men as they really are ! 

Well, the great men under whose influence I 
now fell dealt tenderly with the imbibed preju- 



126 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

dices even of Protestantism ; and, holding on by 
persons standing so firmly as they seemed to stand, 
I did not seem to have lost any thing — to have 
weakened my moral footing. They could make 
all allowance, sympathise with my sorrow such 
as it was, show how it was right and amiable that 
I should feel it; and, in the position which they 
had assumed, they seemed to have the antidote 
f against the mischief from the transfer of allegiance 
from one set of teachers to another, in representing 
themselves not as speaking their own words, but 
those of the holy mother of us all — the Church. 
So a strange process began to form ; for, while it was 
in reality but their own great persons which were 
drawing us all towards them, they unwillingly de- 
ceived us into believing it was not their influence, but 
the body's power; and, while in fact we were only 
Newmanites, we fancied we were becoming Catholics. 
Most mournful — ^for in the imagined security of 
our new position, as our minds were now unfolding, 
with deep faith in ofie great man, we began to follow 
him along the subtle reasonings with which he drew 
away from under us the supports upon which Pro- 
testant Christianity had been content to rest its 
weight; we allowed ourselves to see its contradic- 
tions, to recognise the logical strength of the argu- 
ments of Hume, to acknowledge that the old 
answers of Campbell, the evidences of Paley, were 
futile as the finger of a child on the spoke of an 
engine's driving-wheel ; nay, more, to examine the 
logic of unbelief with a kind of pleasure, as hitting 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 127 

our adversaries to the death, and never approaching 
us at all. So, gradually unknowing what we did, 
to accept the huge bisection of mankind; to con- 
fine Christianity to the Church visible, and exclude 
those beyond its pale from the blessings of the 
covenant — to recognise the Catholic illustration of 
the ark — to continue the anathemas of the creeds, 
while we determined the objects on whom they 
rested — to allow the world outside to have all 
talent, all splendour, power, beauty, intellect, su- 
periority, even the highest heroic virtues, and yet 
to be without that peculiar goodness which flowed 
out of the body of which the elect were members, 
and which alone gave chance of salvation. 

It is true that we were defrauded of the just in- 
dignation with which our hearts would have rebelled 
against so terrible a violation of ^theirj.nstincts, by 
mysterious hints of uncovenanted mercies, of grace 
given to the heathen in overflowing kindness ; and 
gentle softening of the more consistent theology of 
the fathers, which flung infants, dying unbaptised, 
into the everlasting fire-lake. They would not let 
us see what they perhaps themselves shrunk from 
seeing, that in the law of Divine Providence there 
is none of this vague unreal trifling ; that, if they 
believed their histories and their illustrations, they 
must not flinch from the conclusions. The sucking 
cliildren of the unchosen were not saved in Noah's 
flood. The cities of the Canaanites were deluged 
with the blood of hundreds of thousands whose inno- 
cence appeals to outraged humanity. What had those 



128 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

poor creatures done to justify their fate more than 
the Christians beyond the pale, or the heathen whose 
virtues plead to have intercession made for them ? 

The Catholics must not trifle with their theory, 
and on this twilight of uncovenanted mercies they 
must allow me to ask them these questions. 

Was the Christian sacrifice necessary, or was it 
not ? That is, could mankind be saved without it? 
You will answer, at least Catholics always do answer. 
They could not. 

To derive the benefit of that sacrifice, is it neces- 
sary to be within the Church, and receive it through 
the sacraments ? If Yes ; then all beyond derive 
no benefit, and so are lost. If No ; then what do 
\ you mean ? There is no such thing as " partially 
i necessary ;" a thing is necessary or it is not. You 
'will say then — Not necessary; but necessary in 
such and such circumstances — wherever God has 
made it possible. But if God had pleased it would 
have been universally possible; and with an at- 
tached natural penalty of eternal damnation, which 
can only be counteracted by a miracle, it is hard to 
conceive him leaving men without the one essential. 

Well, then, do you mean these sacraments are 
essential to the living a saintly life ? But others 
live saintly lives. If they do, you say that is by 
the extraordinary mercy. But the Catholics do not 
number a tithe of the human race — as a rule we do 
not find a larger proportion of good men among 
them than among others ; and if, out of every age 
and nation^ tliose who fear God are under the influ- 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 129 

ence of His grace, and are in the other world to 
become members of His Church, a larger number 
by far will be taken from those beyond the pale 
than from within it; and, therefore, the Catholics 
will receive by the extraordinary, the others by the 
ordinary channels. The extra- sacramental is the 
common way ; and how strange a system you make 
the Almighty to have constructed, when it does but 
answer a tenth of its purpose, and the rest is by 
method of exception. Surely this is worse than 
midsummer madness! The fathers are right — 
you are ridiculous. It may be that sacramental 
grace is essential ; but the alternative is absolute — 
it is, or it is not. Begin to make exceptions; bend 
your line, here a little and there a little, — a curve 
for the pious Lutherans, an angle for the better sort 
of heathens, — and you will soon make your figure 
a helpless, shapeless no-figure. Take up the swim- 
mers into the ark, and they will soon outnumber 
the good family there; and ark and all will go 
down, and you will have to take common chance 
in the water with the rest. 

No ! the earthly Canaan was given to the chosen 
people without respect of virtue, as Jewish history 
too painfully shows. So with your theory is the 
heavenly. You need not come in with your text, 
" Many shall come fi'om the east and the west," 
giving it the human sense, which shall save the hea- 
thens in the next world. For you it means, and but 
must mean, the call of the Gentiles under baptism. 
If you recoil from this conclusion, then, in God's 

G 3 



130 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

name, have done with your covenant and your 
theory; and do not in the same hreath allow and 
disallow human excellence as a title to heaven, or 
the doctrine of the infinite divisihility of matter 
must be called in to help you in your dividings. 

A few words more shall he said to you, of which you 
shall not like the hearing. I will not prejudge you ; 
but, if you beheve what you say, to allow us to go 
on feeding ourselves upon the literature of those 
old glorious Greeks and Eomans, to think by Aris- 
totle and Cicero, to feel by ^schylus and Sophocles, 
to reproduce among ourselves by exclusive study 
the early figures of those great kings, patriots, 
poets, princes, is the most barbarous snare which 
was ever laid before the feet of weak humanity. 
And you do this — you who profess the care of our 
souls ! Ah, if you did care for them, you would up 
and gird yourselves, and cry — Leave them, leave 
them, they are heathens ! Learn your Greek in 
Athanasius, and your Latin in Augustine. Those 
were God's enemies whom He had not chosen, and 
therefore has rejected. The more dangerous be- 
cause they look so like His friends ; but splendid 
sinners, as the wise fathers called them. 

What, gentlemen, do you suppose that I am to 
make friends with Socrates and Phocion, and be- 
lieve that human nature is full of the devil, and that 
only baptism can give chance for a holy life ? That 
I will hand Plato into destruction ; that Sophocles, 
and Phidias, and Pindar, and Germanicus, and Ta- 
citus, and Aurelius, and Trajan were no better than 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 131 

poor iinenligiitened Pagans, and that, where you not 
only permit me to make acquaintance with them, but 
compel me to it as a condition, forsooth, under which 
I may become a minister of the Christian faith ! 

You think, perhaps, that I shall draw healthy 
comparisons, and see what heathenism could not 
make of man. That I will place (I will not com- 
pare invidiously) — that I will place David above Leo- 
nidas, Eusebius above Tacitus, Jerome over Plato, 

Aquinas over Aristotle, and yourselves over 

Ah, Heaven ! where shall I find an antitype of you ? 
You shall let me see and love whole generations of 
men who would live long lives of self-denial and 
heroic daring, for the love of God, and virtue, and 
humanity; asking no reward but in the consciousness 
that they were doing God's will ; and persevering- 
still, even with the grave as the limit of their hori- 
zon, because they loved good and hated evil ; and 
you point me out in contrast the noble army of 
martyrs — men who knew how to die in the strength 
of the faith, that death was the gate of eternal Pa- 
radise ; and which is the noblest, and which is the 
hardest task, I wonder ? No, the world is mystery 
enough, no doubt of that, and your Catholic Chris- 
tianity maij be true ; but, if you think so, you, who 
are our soul's shepherds, at your peril be it, close 
up the literature of the world ; like that deeply be- 
lieving Caliph, close, close our eyes in seven-fold 
bhndness against all history except the Bible his- 
tory, and mark out the paths of Christian teaching 



132 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

in which you will have us walk within walls hard 
and thick as the adamant round Paradise. 

So much for the digressing upon an argument 
which I have let fall here where it is lying, not as 
what I felt at the time of which I speak, hut as 
what now, as I look back over it, appears the logical 
account of the ill- satisfaction which I did feel. It 
is with argument as it is with the poetry of passion 
— we feel before we can speak of what we feel ; and 
it is only on the return of calmness, when the 
struggle is past and the horizon clear again, that 
we can delineate and analyse our experiences. 



Among all the foohsh and unmeaning cries over 
■which party spirit has gone distracted, that of "" pri- 
vate judgment" stands, perhaps, without parallel. 
Whether, as the Protestant explains it, we take it as 
a right, or as the Cathohc, as a duty, the right of 
judging for oneself, or the right of choosing one's 
teacher, or the duty of doing both, or one, or nei- 
ther, whatever we call it, never was so strange a 
■ creature brought to birth out of our small but fer- 
tile imaginings. 

What is right or duty without power .^ To tell 
a man it is his duty to submit his judgment to the 
judgment of the church, is like telHng a wdfe it is 
her duty to love her husband — a thing easy to say, 
but meaning simply nothing. Affection must be 
iwon, not commanded. If the husband and wife 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 133 

both continue tlie same persons as they were when 
they did love each other (supposing it was so), the 
love will continue ; hut if the natures change, either 
of both or one of them, and become antipathetic, it 
would be as reasonable to lecture oxygen and hy- 
drogen on the duty of continuing in combination 
when they are decomposed by galvanism. They 
may, indeed, be forcibly held together in juxtapo- 
sition by external restraint ; but combined they are 
not. And, while they are as they are, they can- 
not be combined. 

So it is with the church and its members. As long 
as the church has the power to mould the minds of her 
children after her own sort, in such a way that their 
coherence in her shall be firm enough to overcome 
whatever external attraction they may fall within 
the sphere of, so long she has a right to their 
hearts. While she has the power to employ the 
external restraints of hope and fear — so long as she 
can torture and scourge, or so long as she directs 
public opinion, and her frown can entail any prac- 
tical inconvenience — so long she has a right to the 
external conformity of such individuals as are of a 
kind to be governed by such considerations. As 
soon as she loses both, the bereaved lady may still 
cry, '' I have a right to your affections, it is your 
duty to submit to me ; " but she will have lost her 
divine sanction, and would be about as reasonable 
as the last of the Stuarts whining over his rights to 
the duty of the English. 

Again, for an individual, be he who he will, in a 



134 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

world where faculties are so unequally distributed, 
and some are weaker than others, to say he has a 
right to he his own teacher, or to choose who he 
will have for a teacher, is much as if a satellite of 
Jupiter betrayed a disposition to set up on his own 
account, or took a fancy to older ways and wished 
to transfer his allegiance to Saturn. If Saturn left 
his orbit, and came down for him, and by right of 
stronger attraction could take him away in a strug- 
gle, then of course he would have a right to him. 

So it is with us all. I use magnetic illustrations, 
not because I think the mind magnetic, but because 
magnetic comparisons are the nearest we have, and 
the laws are exactly parallel. Minds vary in sensi- 
tiveness and in self-power, as bodies do in suscepti- 
bility of attraction and repulsion. When, when 
shall we learn that they are governed by laws as in- 
exorable as physical laws, and that a man can as easily 
refuse to obey what has power over him as a steel 
atom can resist the magnet ? Take a bar of steel, 
its component atoms cohere by attraction ; turn off 
the current of electricity, or find means to negative 
it, and the bar becomes a dust heap. The earth's 
attraction calls off this portion, the wind scatters 
that, or another magnetic body in the neighbour- 
hood will proceed to appropriate. So it is with be- 
lief : belief is the result of the proportion, whatever 
it be, in which the many elements which go to 
make the human being are combined. In some the 
grosser nature preponderates ; they believe largely in 
their stomachs, in the comforts and conveniences 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 135 

of life, and being of such Idncl, so long as these are 
not threatened, they gravitate steadily towards the 
earth. Numerically this is the largest class of be- 
lievers, with very various denominations indeed; 
bearing the names of every faith beneath the sky, 
and composing the conservative elements in them, 
and therefore commonly persons of much weight in 
established systems. But they are what I have 
called them : their hearts are where I said they 
were, and as such interests are commonly selfish, 
and self separates instead of unites, they are not 
generally powerful against any heavy trial. Others 
of keener susceptibility are yet volatile, with slight 
power of continuance, and fly from attraction to 
attraction in the current of novelty. Others of 
stronger temper gravitate more slowly, but com- 
bine more firmly, and only disunite again when the 
idea or soul of the body into which they form dies 
out, or they fall under the influence of some very 
attractive force indeed. It may be doubted, indeed, 
whether a body which is really organised by a 
living idea, can lose a healthy member except by 
violence. 

If it be difficult to follow the subtle features of 
electric affinity among the inorganic bodies or sim- 
plest elemental combinations, it may well be thought 
impossible in organisms so curiously comphcated as 
that of the human being. However, such as it is, 
the illustration will serve. 

The cry of private judgment meant simply this, 
that the authority of the office was ceasing to influ- 



136 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

ence, and was being superseded by the authority of 
the gifted man — that the church had lost its power, 
perhaps its life, and was decomposing. The talk of 
the duty of determining to remain in her upon pri- 
vate judgment, was an attempt to inspire the atoms 
which were flying off with salutary fear of conse- 
quences, which would submit them again to her 
control. 

Well, as we had none of us any very clear idea 
to magnetize us, and as yet had not approached the 
point when the other influences would come to bear 
upon us, and we should begin to feel the gravi- 
tation downwards in the necessity of getting on in 
the world, the leader of the movement took us all 
his own way ; all that is who were not Arnoldized. 
And even some of these he contrived to draw away 
by the nearness and continuance of his action upon 
them, as the comet's attraction played the deuce 
with Jupiter's satellites while it continued in their 
neighbourhood. It is true we thought, yes, we 
thought we were following the church : but it was 
like the goose in the child's toy, which is led by 
the nose up and down the basin by the piece of 
bread ... by the piece of bread . . . with the 
loadstone inside it. 

Well, everybody remembers the history of the 
Tracts, and how the doctrine of development began 
to show itself as the idea grew; threatening such 
mighty changes; and how unsteady minds began 
to grow uneasy ; and heads of houses to frown, and 
bishops to deliver charges. Hitherto these Tracts 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 137 

liacl represented pretty exactly Anglican Oxford. 
Though dangerously clever, and more dangerously 
good, they had never broken hounds, and the unen- 
thusiastic authorities had found themselves unable 
to do more than warn, and affect to moderate. The 
world outside seemed partially to smile on the 
movement, as at any rate a digging over an unpro- 
ductive soil. Eome was never spoken of as the 
probable goal of any but a few foolish young men, 
whose presence would be injurious to any cause, 
and who were therefore better in the enemy's camp 
than at home. And no worldly interests had as 
yet been threatened with damage, except perhaps 
the Friday dinner and the Lent second course; the 
loss of which, being not enough to be painful, became 
a piquant stimulant, and gave edge to appetite. 

Now, to a single-minded man, who is either 
brave enough or reckless enough to surrender him- 
self wholly to one idea, and look neither right nor 
left, but only forward, what earthly consequences 
may follow is not material. Persecution strengthens 
him; and so he is sure he is right, whether his 
course end in a prison or on a throne is no matter 
at all. But men of this calibre are uncommon in 
any age or in any country — very uncommon in this 
age and this country. Most of us are sent to 
universities or wherever it may be, not merely to be 
educated into men, but to get along in the world ; 
make money, it may be called, in an invidious way; 
but it is not only to make money; it is that we 
may take up our own position in life, and support 



138 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

ourselves in the scale of society where we were born. 
We are placed in a road along which we have only 
to travel steadily, and the professions, as they are 
called, are trodden in by the experience of the com- 
mon sense of mankind, making large advance and 
best success quite possible to average hack genius, 
which would make nothing of its across country. 
The world cares little about theology; and the 
worldly professions soon leave it out of account 
except on Sunday . . . But to the Oxford students, 
and particularly to such of them as form the opi- 
nion of Oxford, theology is itself the profession. 
Chosen as a profession, it is followed with pro- 
fessional aims, and, as the idea of the Tracts grew 
clearer and more exclusive, the time came when the 
angle at which the line of its course inclined to- 
wards the professional influence became obtuse 
instead of acute, and this last began to retard. 

It became necessary to surrender tutorships, 
fellowships, and the hopes of them; to find diffi- 
culties in getting ordained, to lose slowly the pros- 
pects of pleasant curacies, and livings, and parson- 
age houses, and the sweet little visions of home 
paradises — a serious thing to young high church- 
men, who were commonly of the amiable enthusias- 
tic sort, and so, of course, had fallen most of them 

into early engagements and from this 

time the leader's followers began to lag behind. 
"' They turned back, and walked no more after 
him." I am not blaming them. They did 
not know what was governing them, and, if they 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 139 

did, tliey would have had very much to urge for 
themselves. It is no light thing this mortifying 
the hopes of friends, who have, perhaps, made pain- 
ful sacrifices to lift us forward. It is no light thing 
to encounter the hard words and hard facts of life, 
without sympathy, till the cause is won and it is 
not needed; rather perhaps with the coldness of 
those we love, the sneers of society, the three meals 
a- day never slacking their claims, and the where- 
withal to provide them poorly forthcoming. 

The idea drives a man into the wilderness hefore 

he comes to the land of milk and honey 

and little water and the scanty sprinkhng of angel's 
food he must make shift to he content with. Spe- 
culation bakes no bread, and often, too, the sinking 
heart flags and fails to trust itself, and the moments 
of insight are short, and the hours of despondency 
are long, and the unsteady reason rises among 
vague misgivings, and points reproachfully back 
to the fleshpots of Egypt, wliich we have left to die 
in the desert. After all, too, is not the beaten road, 
a road wliich men have beaten, good men who had 
God's grace in them. Surely what presumption is 
it not for here and there a self- wise impertinent to 
refuse to listen to the old practised guides, and fly 
off, he knows not where, after a mirage he calls an 
" idea." . . . Peace, peace, perturbed spirits ! Per- 
fection in this world is a dream Poor sheep ! 

hsten to the call of your shepherd; turnback before 

the sand overwhelm you So reason with 

themselves the many half- worshippers of truth ; and 



140 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

they turn back and find tlieir account in turning. 
They find their account in the peace they sought. 
Genius only has a right to choose its own way, for 
genius only has the power to face what it will find 

there. There is a lion in the path let the 

common man keep clear of him. So all men gra- 
vitate into their spheres; only wo to those who 
swing suspended in the balance, and can follow 
heartily neither earth nor heaven. 

There is genius with its pale face and worn dress 
and torn friendships and bleeding heart . . . strong 
only in strugghng ; counting all loss but truth and 
the love of God; rewarded, as men court reward, 
perhaps by an after apotheosis, yet never seeking 
this reward or that reward, save only its own good 
conscience steady to its aim; promising nothing; 
least of all peace — only struggles which are to end 
but with the grave. 

And there is respectability, with its sweet smiling 
home, and loving friends, and happy family, a fair 
green spring, a golden summer, an autumn sinking 
fruit-loaded to the earth — the final winter rest fol- 
lowing on the full finished course of gentle duty 
done, and for the future prospects, easy and secure. 
Choose between them, O man, at the parting of the 
ways ! Choose. You may have one ; both you 
cannot have. Either will give you to yourself- — 
eithev j)erhaj)s to God. Yet, if you do choose the 
first, choose it with all your heart. You will need 
it all to bear what will be laid upon you. No wist- 
ful lookings back upon the pleasant land which you 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 141 

are leaving— no playing with Life. You have 
chosen the heart of things, not the surface; and it 
is no child's play. Fling away your soul once; 
for all, your own small self; if you will find it| 
again. Count not even on immortality. St Paul* 
would make himself anathema for the brethren. 
Look not to have your sepulchre built in after ages 
by the same foolish hands which still ever destroy 
the living prophet. Small honour for you if they 
do build it; and may be they never will build it. 
A thousand patriots go to the scaffold amidst the 
execrations of decent mankind. Out of these thou- 
sand, perhaps the after generation remembers one 
young Emmett; and his name finds honourable 
memory; and young ladies drop sentimental tears 
on the piano notes as they sing the sorrows of his 
broken-hearted bride. 

Enough of this .... But once in our lives we 
have all to choose. More or less we have all felt 
once the same emotions. We have not always been j 
what the professions make of us. Nature made us 
men, and she surrenders not her children without a i 
struggle. I will go back to my story now with but 
this one word, that it is these sons of genius, and 
the fate they meet with, which is to me the one sole 
evidence that there is more in "this huge state" 
than what is seen, and that in very truth the soul 
of man is not a tiling which comes and goes, is 
builded and decays like the elemental frame in 
which it is set to dwell, but a very living force, 



142 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

a very energy of God's organic Will, which rules and 
moulds this universe. 

For what are they? Say not, say not, it is but a 
choice which they have made; and an immortality 
of glory in heaven shall reward them for what they 
have sacrificed on earth. It may he so ; hut they 
do not ask for it. They are what they are from the 
Divine power which is in them, and you would 
never hear their complainings if the grave was the 
gate of annihilation. 

Say not they have their reward on earth in the 
calm satisfaction of noble desires, nobly gratified, 
in the sense of great works greatly done; that too 
may be, but neither do they ask for that. They 
alone never remember themselves; they know no 
end but to do the will which beats in their heart's 
deep pulses. Ay, but for these, these few mar- 
tyred heroes, it might be after all that the earth was 
but a huge loss-and-profit ledger book; or a toy ma- 
chine some great angel had invented for the amuse- 
ment of his nursery; and the storm and the sun- 
shine but the tears and the smiles of laughter in 
which he and his baby cherubs dressed their faces 
over the grave and solemn airs of slow-paced re- 
spectability. 

Yes, genius alone is the Eedeemer ; it bears our 
sorrows, it is crowned with thorns for us; the children 
of genius are the church militant, the army of the 
human race. Genius is the life, the law of mankind, 
itself perishing, that others may take possession 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 143' 

and enjoy. Eeligion, freedom, science, law, the 
arts, meclianical or beautiful, all which gives resjoec- 
tahility a chance, have been moulded out by the toil 
and the sweat and the blood of the faithful; who, 
knowing no enjoyment, were content to be the ser- 
vants of tbeir own born slaves, and wrought out the 
happiness of the world which despised and disowned 
them. 

So much for the sons of genius .... one of 
whom — perhaps one of three or four at present alive 
in this planet — was at that time rising up in Oxford, 
and drawing all men towards him. I myself was 
so far fortunate, that the worldly influence of which 
I spoke did not so immediately bear upon me. 
I was, as the phrase goes, moderately provided for ; 
and, in my own reflectings upon the matter, it seemed 
to me that I in a way ought to take advantage of a 
fortunate position ; and, withoutjudging the motives 
of others who acted differently because I could not 
tell how I myself might have acted if I had been 
tempted in the same way, to follow on where the 
direct course seemed to lead me. 

Life complete, is lived in two worlds ; the one in- 
side, and the one outside. The first half of our days is 
spent wholly in the former ; the second, if it is what it 
ought to be, wholly in the latter — Pretty well till 
we have done with our educating theories are only 
words to us, and church controversy not of things 
but of shadows of things. Through all that time life 
and thought beyond our own experience is but a 
great game played out by book actors ; we do not 



144 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

think, we only think we think, and we have been too 
busy in our own hne to have a notion really of 
what is beyond it. But while so much of our talk is 
so unreal, our own selves, our own risings, falhngs, 
aspirings, resolutions, misgivings, these are real 
enough to us; these are our hidden life, our sanc- 
tuary of our own mysteries It was into 

these thatN.'s power of insight was so remarkable. 
I beheve no young man ever heard him preach with- 
out fancying that some one had been betraying his 
own history, and the sermon was aimed specially at 
him. It was hkely that, while he had possession so 
complete of what we did know about ourselves, we 
should take his word for what we did not; and, 
while he could explain us, let him explain the rest 
for us. But it is a problem heavier than has been 
yet laid on theologians to make what the world has 
now grown into square with the theory of Catholicism. 
And presently as we began to leave the nest, and, 
though under his eye, fly out and look about for 
ourselves, some of us began to find it so. I was not 
yet acquainted with any of the modern continental 
writers, but I had read a great deal of Enghsh, and 
.clouds of things began to rise before me in lights 
wonderfully different from those in which I used to 
see them. I will not go along the details, but I will 
lay down a few propositions, all of which were 
granted, with the conclusions I myself was tempted 
to draw, and those which I was taught to draw. 

1. That, if the Catholic theory be true, it is not 
only necessary to talk of hating the Keformation, but 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 145 

one must hate it with a hearty good- will as a rending 

of the body of Christ . . , . . and yet 

That in the sixteenth century the church was full 
of the most fearful abuses; that many of the clergy 
were unbelievers, and many more worldly and sen- 
sual; that to what we call an honest simple under- 
standing, it had become a huge system of fraud, 
trickery, and imposture. Granted. 

2. That the after Keformation in the Roman 
Catholic church was, humanly speaking, a conse- 
quence of the great revolt from her, which had 
shamed her into exerting herself. Granted. 

3. That, ever since, the nations which have re- 
mained Catholic have become comparatively power- 
less, while the Protestant nations have uniformly 
risen; that each nation, in fact, has risen exactly as 
it has emancipated itself. Granted. 

4. That the Catholic church since the Eeformation 
has produced no great man of science, no statesman, 
no philosopher, no poet. Granted. 

5. That historical criticism, that scientific disco- 
very have uniformly tended to invalidate the autho- 
rity of histories to which the infalhble church has 
committed herself. Granted. 

6. That the personal character of the people in all 
Eoman Catholic countries is poor and mean; that 
they are untrue in their words, unsteady in their 
actions, disrespecting themselves in the entire tenor 
of their life and temper. Granted. 

7. And that this was to be traced to the moral 
dependence in which they were trained ; to the con- 

H 



146 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

science being taken out of their own hands and de- 
posited with the priests; to the disrespect with 
-^ which this Hfe is treated by the CathoHc theory; 
the low esteem in which the human will and cha- 
racter are considered; and, generally, to the condi- 
tion of spiritual bondage in which they are held. 
Not granted, but to be believed nevertheless. 

Now if these things were facts, taken alone at 
least, they were unquestionably serious. Happily I 
I had very early learned the fallacy of building much 
1 on logic and verbal argument. Single sets of truths 
i I knew to be as httle conclusive in theology as in 
I physics; and, in one as in the other, no theory to 
be worth anything, however plausibly backed up 
; with Scripture texts or facts, which was not gathered 
bond Jlde from, the analysis of all the attainable phe- 
nomena, and verified wherever possible by experi- 
ment. " Here is a theory of the world which you 
bring for my acceptance : well, there^Js the world ; 

^tU — ^^LjSiS-iSJ P^ ^ <^&S~JI2.^ ^®^^ *^^ language 
mto sense by it ?" was the only method; and so I 
was led always to look at broad results, at pages and 
chapters, rather than at single words and sentences, 
where for a few Hues a false key may serve to make 
a meaning So of these broad observa- 
tions I only expected a broad solution. I did not 
draw conclusions for myself, I never yet doubted; 
but I wished to be told what I was to make of facts 
so startling. 

These answers which follow I do not mean to say 
were given categorically to categorically asked ques- 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 147 

tions, but on tlie wliole tliey are such as were in 
various ways and at considerable intervals of time 
suggested to me. 

1. Either it was true or it was not true, that man 
was fallen and required redemption ; that from the 
beginning of time a pecuhar body of people, not 
specially distinguished for individual excellen- 
cies, had nevertheless been the objects of pecuhar 
care, the channels of peculiar grace; that their 
language was inspired, their priests divinely guided. 

2. If this was true, we were not to demand at 
present results which never had been found. 

3. That the Spirit worked not visibly, but in- 
visibly. 

4. That my arguments told not only against Ca- \ 
tholicism, hut against Christia7iity, considered as 
historical and exclusive. 

5. That Protestant Christianity on the Conti- 
nent had uniformly developed into Socinianism, 
and thence into Pantheism, and from a fact was be- \ 
coming an idea merely. 

6. That Catholicism altogether was a preter- 
natural system, treating the world as a place of trial 
and temptation, and the Devil as the main director 
of what seemed greatest and most powerful in it ; 
and, therefore, that we should least look among j 
Christians for such power and greatness; and broken- ' 
hearted penitence was not likely to produce such 
effects as seemed to me so admirable. 

7. The Bible everywhere denounced the world as 
the enemy of God, not as the friend of God ; and by 

H 3 



148 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

the world must be meant the real world of fact, not a 
fantastic world of all kinds of vice and wickedness, 
which had no existence beyond our own imaginings. 
' The world was always what the world is now — a 
world of greatness as well as pleasure — of intellect, 
power, beauty, nobleness. This was the world we 
forswore in baptism, and in our creed denounced. 
The temper of a saint was quite different from the 
i temper of a world's gi-eat man ; and we had no 
1 right, because we found this last attractive and beau- 
tiful, to assume that he was not therefore what the 
Bible warned us against. If man is fallen, his un- 
sanctified virtues are vices. 

9. That the hold of Christianity was on the heart, 
and not on the reason. Reason was not the. whole 
of us; and^alone it must ever lead to infidelity. 

10. Finally, We were Christians, or we were not. 
Confessedly Christianity was mysterious; the my- 
sterijous solution of a mysterious world ; not liEeTy 
to be reasonaBle. If once we began accommodating 
and assimilating, shrinking from that difficulty, and 
stretching our creed to this, expanding hberaJism 
would grow stronger by concessions. The Bible 
warned us sternly enough of what we were, and of the 
little right we had to place confidence in ourselves. 
Unbelief was a sin, not a mistake, and deserved not 
argument, but punishment. 

It was enough for me to learn, as now I soon did, 
that all real arguments against Catholicism were, in 
fact, arguments against Christianity; and I was 
readily induced to acknowledge that the Reforma- 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 149 

tion had been the most miserable infatuation. The 
world was an enemy dangerous enough without 
home feuds ; and the Keformers, in allowing reason 
to sit in judgment in matters of faith, in appealing 
to common sense, and in acknowledging the right of 
personal independence, were introducing elements, no 
one of which could produce anything but falsehood, 
in a system which recognised none of them, which 
was divine, not human, and, being divinely founded, 
had the promise of divine sustaining. I saw that 
in denying the continual authority of the Church's 
witness, and falling back on individual experience, 
or historic testimony, they had, in fact, cut away 
the only support on which Kevelation could at all 
sustain itself. That in the cry of "" the Bible, and 
the Bible only " (setting aside the absurdity of the 
very idea, as if the Bible was not written in 
human language, and language not dependent for 
interpretation upon tradition; I say, setting aside 
this), men are assuming the very point at issue; 
for, if the Church was mistaken, why must the Bible 
be true ? That is, why must it be wholly true ? 
why not contain the same alloy of true and false to 
be found in all other books ? 

In fact, they had cut the roots of the tree ; for a 
few years it might retain some traces of its old Hfe ; 
but they had broken off the supply, and they were 
but trading on what was left of the traditionary 
reverence for the Bible which the Church had in- 
stilled into mankind. Experience had shown, that 
the same reason which rejected the Saints' miracles 



150 THE NEMESIS OF EAITH. 

as incredible would soon make hard mouths at the 
Bible miracles. The notion of inspiration was no 
more satisfactory than that of the Church's infalli- 
bility; and if the power of the keys, and sacra- 
i mental grace, and apostoHc succession, were absur- 
dities, the Devil was at least equally so. And with 
the Devil fell sin, and the atonement fell, and all 
revelation fell ; and we were drifting on the current 
of a wide ocean, we knew not where, with neither 
oar nor compass. 

And so I held on, with all my heart, in the power 

of old association ; and, clinging fast to what I could 

comprehend of our leader's views, for a time dreamed 

they were my own. Hitherto, in considering the 

existing unhappy state of Catholic countries,England, 

unquestionably the strongest country in the world, we 

had taken as a Protestant country. The tendency 

of Catholicism we saw to be to depress the external 

character of man; that, the deeper he believed it, 

the more completely he became subdued. Protest- 

I autism, on the contrary, cultivated man outwards on 

I every side, insisted on self-reliance, taught every one 

i to stand alone, and depend hniQielf on his own ener- 

\ gies. Now, then, came the question of the Church 

^ of England — was it Catholic, was it Protestant ? for, 

if this were Protestantism, surely the Enghsh, as a 

nation, were the most Protestant in the world. Long 

before the Keformation, the genius of independence 

had begun to struggle for emancipation among them, 

and the dazzling burst of the Elizabethan era was the 

vigorous expansion of long-imprisoned energy, spring- 



THE NEMESIS OF EAITH. 151 

ing out in bounding joyous freedom. The poets, from 
Chaucer to Milton, were, without exception, on the 
reforming side ; and the strong practical heart of the 
country found its fullest and clearest expression in 
Oliver Cromwell. Unquestionably the Enghsh were 
Protestants in the fullest sense of the word; yet, 
in spite of tliis unhealthy symptom, the Enghsh 
Church had retained, apparently providentially, 
something of a Cathohc character. It had retained 
the Succession, it had retained the Sacraments, it 
had retained Liturgical forms, wliich committed it 
to the just Cathohc understanding of them. The 
question with the Tract writers was, whether, with the 
help of this old framework they could unprotest- 
antize its working character, and reinspire it with so 
much of the old hfe as should enable it to do the 
same work in England which the Eoman Church pro- 
duced abroad; to make England cease to produce 
great men — as we count greatness — and for poetry, i 
courage, daring, enterprise, resolution, and broad | 
honest understanding, substitute devotion, endu- ' 
ranee, humility, self-denial, sanctity, and faith. 
This was the question at issue. It might take other 
names ; it might resent the seeing itself represented 
so broadly. But this was, at heart, what it meant, 
if it meant anything — to produce a wholly different 
type of character. It was no longer now a nice 
dispute about authority. Long-sighted men saw 
now that Christianity itself had to fight for its hfe, 
and that, unless it was very soon to die in England, 
as it had died in Germany and France, sometliing 



152 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

else than the broad solid English sense must 
he inoculated into the hearts of us. We were all 
hberahzing as we were going on, making too much 
of tliis world, and losing our hold upon the next ; 
forgettiug, as we all had, that the next was the only 
real world, and this hut a thorny road to it, to he 
trod with bleeding feet, and broken spirits. It was 
high time. 

What a sight must this age of ours have been to 
an earnest believing man hke Newman, who had an 
eye to see it, and an ear to hear its voices? A 
fooHsh Church, chattering, parrot-Hke, old notes, of 
which it had forgot the meaning; a clergy who 
not only thought not at all, but whose heav)^ 
ignorance, from long unreaHty, clung about them 
hke a garment, and who mistook their fool's cap 
and bells for a crown of wisdom, and the music 
of the spheres ; selfishness ahke recognized prac- 
tically as the rule of conduct, and faith in God, in 
man, in virtue, exchanged for faith in the belly, 
in fortunes, carriages, lazy sofas, and cusliioned 
■ pews; Bentham pohtics, and Paley religion; all 
I thejhought deserving to be called thought, the flow- 
I ing tide of Germany, and the philosophy of Hume 
I and Gibbon ; all the spiritual feeling, the light froth 
of the Wesleyans and Evangelicals ; and the only 
real stern life to be found anywhere, in a strong re- 
solved and haughty democratic independence, heaving 
and rolhng underneath the chaff- spread surface. How 
was it hke to fare with the clergy gentlemen, and 
the Church turned respectable, in the struggle with 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 153 

enemas like these? Erastianism, pluralities, pre - 
bendal stalls, and pony-gigging parsons, — what: 
work were they like to make against the proud,; 
rugged, intellectual republicanism, with a fire| 
sword between its lips, bidding cant and lies be still \\ 
and philosophy, with Niebuhr criticism for a reap-'j 
ing sickle, mowing down their darling story-books?) 
High time it was to move indeed. High time for! 
the Church warriors to look about them, to burnish; 
up their armour, to seize what ground was yet re- 
maining, wdiat time to train for the battle. 

It would not serve^to cultivate the intellect. All i 
over Europe, since Spinoza wrote, what of strongest 1 
intellect there was had gone over to the enemy, i 
Genius was choosing its own way, acknowledging ? 
no longer the authority either of man or docu- 
ment ; and unless in some way or other the heart 
could be preoccupied — unless the Church could win 
back the love of her cliildren, and temper them 
quite differently from the tone in wliich they were 
now tempered, the cause was lost — and for ever. 
So, then, they must begin with the clergy. To 
wean the Church from its Erastianism into miU- 
tancy, where it might at least command respect for 
its sincerity— to wean the bishops from their palaces 
and lazy carriages and fashionable families, the 
clergy from their snug firesides and manning 
and giving in marriage : this was the first step. 
Slowly then to draw the people out of the whirl 
of business to thought upon themselves — from self- 
assertion, for the clamouring for their rights, and 

H 3 



154 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

the craving for independence, to almsgiving, to en- 
durance of wrong, to the confessional — from doing 
to praying — from early hours in the office, or in the 
field, to matins and daily service : this was the pur- 
pose of the Tract movement. God knows, if 
Christianity he true, a purpose needful enough to 
get fulfilled. For surely it is madness, if the world 
he the awful place the Bihle says it is, the Devil's 
kingdom — the battle-field between good and evil 
spirits for the eternal happiness or eternal perdition 
of human souls — to go out, as we all do, clergy and 
all of us — to go out into its highways and dust our 
feet along its thoroughfares ; to take part in its 
amusements; to eat, and drink, and labour, and 
enjoy our labour's fruit, and find our home and 
happiness here. Madness ! yes, and far worse than 
madness ! For once more, the world is not visibly 
at least the hideous place our early rehgion dreams 
it to be ; it is not a world of profligates and pick- 
pockets, and thieves and sensualists ; it is a world 
of men and women, not all good, but better far than 
bad ; a world of virtue as man's heart deems virtue ; 
of human feelings, sympathies, and kindness; a 
world we cannot enter into without loving it .... 
[ and yet, if we love it, we are to die. 

Oh, most miserable example of disbehef in their 
own precepts are the English clergy ! Denouncing 
the world, they yet live in it ; speaking in the old 
language against indulgence, and luxury, and riches, 
and vanity in the pulpit, how is it that they cannot 
bring themselves, neither they nor their families, to 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 155 

descend from tlie social position, as they call it, in 
which they were born ? Why must they be for ever 
gentlemen ? Why is it that the only unworldhness 
to be found among them is but among those to 
whom poverty leaves no alternative ? 

It was a worldly Church ; yes, there was no doubt 
of it ; and, being so, it early began to scent danger, 
to cry out and anathematize the new teachers who 
prescribed a severer doctrine ; who were trying to 
shame the clergy into a more consistent life by 
reminding them of the dignity of their office. New- 
man had dared to tell them that their armour was 
pasteboard; the oil dying out of their lamps; that 
a tempest was rising which would scatter them like 
chaff before it. Catholic feeling — Catholic energy — 
Catholic doctrine, exhibited in holy life, in prayer, 
and fasting, their own witness at least of their own 
fidehty, might save them. It was a chance, only a 
chance : but their last. Let them rouse themselves, 
and see what they did really beUeve, and why they 
believed ; above all, let them come forward in deed 
as well as word, and prove that they were alive : with 
a faith really heart-rooted, they might yet stand in 
the storm ; but their logic props were bruised reeds 

indeed And what was his reward ? He 

was denounced as a Cassandra prophet ; bid, go get 
him gone, shake the dust from off his feet, and 
depart to his own place. He took them at their 
word, and left the falling house, not without scorn. 
A little more slumber, a little more sleep. It was 
the sluggard's cry, let them find the sluggard's 



156 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

doom. But I had left Mm, too, before this. I 
have outrun my own small history, and I must fall 
back upon my own adventures. He was not the 
only greatly gifted man then living in this England. 
I think he was one of two. Another eye, deep- 
piercing as his, and with a no less wide horizon, 
was looking out across the same perplexed scene, 
and asking his heart, too, what God would tell him 
of it. Some one says that the accident of a ten 
years' earlier or later birth into this world may 
determine the whole direction and meaning of the 
most powerful of minds. The accident of local 
circumstances may produce the same result. Men 
form their texture out of the atmosphere which 
they inhale, and incline this way or that way as the 
current of the wind in which they stand. Newman 
I; grew up in Oxford, in lectures, and college chapels, 
'and school divinity; Mr. Carlyle, in the Scotch 
I Highlands, and the poetry of Goethe. I shall not 
in this place attempt to acknowledge all I owe to 
this very great man ; but, about tln'ee years before 
Newman's secession, chance threw in my way the 
" History of the French Kevolution." I shall but 
caricature my feelings if I attempt to express them; 
and, therefore, I will only say that for the first time 
now it w^as brought home to me, that two men may 
be as sincere, as earnest, as faithful, as uncompro- 
mising, and yet hold opinions far asunder as the 
poles. I have before said that I think the moment 
of this conviction is the most perilous crisis of our 
lives ; for myself, it threw me at once on my own 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 167 

responsibility, and obliged me to look for myself at 
what men said, instead of simply accepting all be- 
cause tliey said it. I began to look about me to 
listen to what had to be said on many sides of the 
question, and try, as far as T could, to give it all 
fair hearing. 

Newman talked much to us of the surrender of 
reason. Eeason, first of every thing, must be 
swept away, so daily more and more unreasonable 
appeared to modern eyes so many of the doctrines 
to which the Church was committed. As I began 
to look into what he said about it, the more diffi- 
cult it seemed to me. What did it mean? Eeason 
could only be surrendered by an act of reason. 
Even the Church's infallible judgments could only 
be received through the senses, and apprehended by 
reason ; why, if reason was a false guide, should we 
trust one act of it more than another ? Fall back 
on human faculty somewhere v^e must, and how^ 
could a superstructure stone be raised on a chaff 
foundation ? While I was perplexing myself about 
this, there came a sermon from him in St. Mary's, 
once much spoken of, containing a celebrated sen- 
tence. The sermon is that on the development of 
religious doctrine — the sentence is this: "Scrip- 
ture says the earth is stationary and the sun moves ; 
science, that the sun is stationary and that the earth 
moves." For a moment it seemed as if every one 
present heard, in those words, the very thing they 
had all wished for and had long waited for — the 
final mesothesis for the reconcihng the two great 



158 THE NEMESIS OF FATTH. 

rivals, Science and Eevelation ; and yet it was that 
sentence wliich at once cleared up my doubts the 
other way, and finally destroyed the faith I had in 
Newman, after "" Tract 90" had shaken it. For to 
what conclusions will it drive us ? If Scripture does 
I not use the word " motion" in the sense in which 
1 qommon writers use it, it uses it in some trans- 
I cendental sense by hypothesis beyond our know- 
I ledge. Therefore Scripture tells us nothing except 
I what may be a metaphysical unattainable truth. 
I But if Scripture uses one word.in such sense with- 
I out giving us warning, why not more words? — 
Why not every word and every sentence ? And 
Scripture, instead of a revelation, becomes a huge 
mysterious combination of one knows not what; 
and, what is worse, seeming all the while to have a 
plain and easy meaning constructed purposely to 
lead us astray. The very thing which Des Cartes, 
at the outset of his philosophy, thought it necessary 
to examine the probability of, whether, that is, 
Deus quidam deceptor existat, who can inten- 
tionally deceive us. Nor is the difficulty solved in 
the very least by the theory of an infallible inter- 
pretation of Scripture. For, by hypothesis, the 
interpretings are by the Holy Spirit; the same 
spirit which has played one such strange trick, and 
may therefore do it again ; nay, is most likely to do 
i it again and again. 

This is carrying out the renunciation of the rea- 
son with a vengeance. Perhaps it is consistent, the 
legitimate development of the idea; the position 



THE NEMESIS OF EATTH. 159 

which all defenders of Bihle infallibility must at last 
he driven to assume. Deepest credulity and deepest 
scepticism have heen commonly believed to he near 
neighbours; hut we have hut to state it in its naked- 
ness, and the strain so long drawn by the mystery 
of revelation upon submission and distrust of our 

own ignorance is overdrawn at last We 

may not know much, but we know enough to feel 
that, if mankind were compelled to accept a doctrine 
so monstrous, suicide and madness would speedily 
make empty benches in the Church Catholic. 

No ; once for all, I felt this could not be. If 
there were no other way to save Scripture than this, 
then, in the name of plain sense and honesty, let 
Scripture go. Yet, here we had been brought at 
last, amidst the noise and clatter of tongues, and 
that by a man who had the deepest moral insight 
into the human heart, and the keenest of logical 
intellects. It was enough to shake our confidence 
in our own reason that Ms reason could accept and 
be satisfied by such a theory ; and certainly, let pas- 
sion adopt what view it will, that treacherous wit of 
ours will contrive to make a case for it. 

Here it was at any rate that I finally cast off. 
Farther along that track I would not go. I could 
not then see the full force of the alternative, and the 
compelling causes which were urging him. I could 
not believe all was indeed so utterly at stake. I 
would try for myself. He went on to the end — to 
the haven where sooner or later it was now clear he 
must anchor at last. The arguments for the Ca- 



160 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

tholicity of the English church continued the same, 
hut he on whom they were to tell was changed. 
He might have home her supineness if he could 
have found the hfe in her for which he thirsted ; 
hut, as his desires deepened with his advances in 
the real feeling of Christianity, it was natural that 
his heart should inchne where he could find them 
most fully gratified. 

If there he any such thing as sin, in proportion 
to the depth with which men feel it, they will gravi- 
tate towards Rome. 

If it he true that the souls even of holy men are as 
continually contracting infirmity as their hodies are ; 
if ahsolution is as constantly necessary for the one as 
ahlution is for the other ; as men of cleanly habits 
of body are more sensitive to the most trifling dirt 
spot, so men of sensitive consciences are miserable 
under taints upon a surface which to a vulgar eye 
seems pure as snow .... add to this the convic- 
tion that the priest's voice and hand alone can dis- 
pense the purifying stream; and beyond question, 
where the fountain runs the fullest, thither they will 
seek to go. 

And sin with Newman was real ; not a misfor- 
tune to be pitied and allowed for ; to be talked of 
gravely in the pulpit, and forgotten when out of it ; 
not a thing to be sentimentally sighed over at the 
evening tea-party, with complacent feeling that we 
were pleasing Heaven by calling ourselves children 
of hell, but in very truth a dreadful monster, a real 
child of a real devil, so dreadful that at its first 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. I6l 

appearance among mankind it had convulsed the 
infinite universe, and that nothing less than a sacri- 
fice, so tremendous that the mind sinks crushed 
before the contemplation of it, could restore the 
deranged balance. Unreasonable as it seemed, he 
really believed this; and, given such an element 
among us as this, one may well give over hope of 
finding truth by reasonable analysis and examina- 
tion of evidence. One must go with what haste one 
can to the system which best understands this mon- 
ster sin, which is best provided with remedies and 
arms against it. To the dry mathematicizing rea- 
son, the Catholic, the Anglo -Catholic, the Lutheran, 
Calvinist, the Socinian, will be equally unacceptable ; 
and the philosopher will somewhat contemptuously 
decline giving either of them the intellectual advan- 
tage. But sin is of faith, not of mathematics. And 
a real human heart, strong enough and deep enough 
to see it and feel it in its enormity, will surely 
choose from among the various religions that one 
where the sacraments are most numerous and most 
constant, and absolution is more than a name, and 
confession is possible without episcopal interdict- 
ings. 

For myself I fell off; not because I had deter- 
mined not to follow, but because I had not yet felt 
this intensity of hunger and of thirst which could 
drive me to accept the alternative, and consent to 
so entire an abandonment of myself. I had learnt 
enough of the reality and awfulness of human life 



162 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

not to play with it ; and I shrunk before what at 
least might be a sin against my Own soul. 

My eyes were opening slowly to see for myself 
the strangeness of this being of ours. I had flung 
myself off into space, and seen this little earth ball 
careering through its depths; this miserable ball, not 
a sand grain in the huge universe of suns, and yet 
to which such a strangely mysterious destiny was 
said to have been attached. I had said to myself. 
Can it be that God, Almighty God, He, the Creator 
himself, went down and took the form of one of 

/ those miserable insects crawling on its surface, and 
died Himself to save their souls ? I had asked the 
question. Did ever man ask it honestly, and 
answer i/es ? Many men have asked it with a fore- 
gone conclusion; but that is not to ask it. I say, 
did ever man who doubted, find his own heart give 
him back the Church's answer? 

I know not. I answered nothing; but I went 
dovm again upon my old earth home; and, with no 
anxiety for claiming any so liigh kindred for my 
race, I felt myself one among them ; I felt that 
they were my brothers, and among them my lot 
was cast. I could not wish them to be children of 
heaven; neither could I make away their weaker 
ones to hell ; they were all my fellows ; I could 
feel with them all, and love them all. For me 

* this world was neither so high nor so low as the 
Church would have it; chequered over with its 
wild Hght shadows, I could love it and all the chil- 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 163 

dren of it^ more dearly, perliaps, because it was not 
all Hght. " These many men so beautiful/' they 
should be neither God's children nor the Devil'j 
children, but cliildren of men. 



.:,.<^' 



Here ends this manuscript, abruptly. I know 

not what others may think of it To me, at 

least, as I read it, it seemed as if my friend were 
working round, slowly perhaps, but surely, to a 
^tron j[e£_a nd more i'ea l£i;;asp_qf life ; and, if he could 
only have been permitted some few months or years 
of further silent communing with himself, the reel- 
ing rocking body might have steadied into a more 
constant motion. But unhappily the trials of life 
will not wait for us. They come at their own tim.e, 
not caring much to inquire how ready we may be 
to meet them .... and we littlejknow what we are 
doing when we ^ast adrift_&omf^ system.'' "How 
is it," said Martin Luther's wife to him, " that in 
the old Church we used to pray so often and so 
earnestly, and now we can but mutter a few words 
a poor once a day, with hearts far enough away" . . 
. . Even superstition is a bracing girdle, which the 
frame that is trained to it can ill afford to lose. 

Markham was beginning to find a happiness to 
which he had been long a stranger. With his 
books and his pen he was making a kind of em- 
ployment for himself; and, better perhaps than this, 
he was employing a knowledge of medicine, which 
at one time he had studied more than superficially. 



164 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

mucli to the advantage of many peasant families, 
with which he made acquaintance in his ramhles. 
In this way passed along the winter. He had 
rooms in a small cottage close to the water; and 
with the help of a little skifi" he had made for 
himself, as the spring came on, and the sky and 
the earth put on their beauty again, the fair 
shores of the lovely lake unfolded all their trea- 
sures to him, and reproached him into peace. 
.... A dreamer he was, and ever would be. Yet 
dreaming need not injure us, if it do but take its 
turn with waking; and even dreams themselves 
may be turned to beauty, by favoured men to whom 
nature has given the powers of casting them into 
form. "'The accomplishment of verse" had not 
been granted to Markham ; but music was able to 
do for him what language could not, and the flute 
obeyed him as its master. Many an evening the 
peasants wandering homewards along the shore had 
stood still to listen to sounds rising from the water 
which they little thought were caused by EngHsh 
breath; and the nightingales took their turn to 
listen to notes as sweet and more varied than their 
own. After all, it is no sign of ill health of mind, 
this power of self- surrender to the emotions which 
nature breathes upon us. We are like the wind 
harp under the summer breeze, and we may almost 
test how far our spirits are in tune with hers by 
the vagrant voices they send forth as she sweeps 
across their strings. 

One evening late in May he was drifting Ian- 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 165 

guidly down the little bay which lay before his 
window; the faintest air was slowly fanning him 
towards the land ; it was too faint even to curl the 
dreamy surface of the lake ; only it served to catch 
the notes which were rising from off his flute and 
bear them in fuller sweetness over the few hundred 
yards of water to the shore. He had been lying in 
this way an hour perhaps or more, playing as the 
feeling rose, or pausing to watch the gold and 
crimson fading from off the sky, and the mellow 
planets streaming out with their double image in 
the air and in the lake. His boat drifting against 
the shore warned him at last to rise ; he sprung out, 
and drew it up beyond danger of the waves, and 
then for the first time observed that he had another 
listener besides the nightingales. A lady was sit- 
ting on the grass bank immediately behind where 
he was standing. It was too dark to let liim see 
her face ; but, as she rose hastily, he perceived that 
she was young and her figure very elegant ; and it 
struck him that there was something English about 
it. He took his hat off as he made way for her to 
pass him, and something seemed to pass between 
her lips, as if her involuntary admiration was melt- 
ing into a half- conscious acknowledgment. He 
returned home, and the next evening, on coming in 
from a walk, he found on his table the card of a Mr. 
Leonard. He was the husband of the lady. She 
had sent him, it appeared, to make the acquaintance 
of a countryman whom she had recognized by the 
old English airs. 



166 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

Mr. Leonard was an easy, good-natured, not very 
sensible English country gentleman, whose fortune 
more than whose person had some years before in- 
duced a certain noble family at home to dispose 

of an encumbrance to him in the form of a 

distantly related young lady who had been thrown 
upon them for support. She only knowing neglect 
where she was, and what of duty she had ever been 
taught being the duty simply of marrying well and 
early to gain an independent position, had no cou- 
rage, perhaps no wish, to decline Mr. Leonard's 
proposals. Her personal beauty had been his at- 
traction. She had married him, and ever since had 
been tolerating a sort of inert existence, which she 
did not know to be a wretched one, only because 
her heart was still in its chrysahs, and she had 
never experienced another. It could not have been 
with any active pleasure that she found herself 
chained for a life to a person she was obliged to 
struggle not to despise, and glimpses now and then 
of some higher state would flash across her like 

a pang of remorse but, rare and fleeting as 

they were, they had passed by her Hke the strange 
misgivings which from time to time flit about us all 
of some other second life we have hved we know not 
where, and had happily been without the power to 
wake her out of her apathetic endurance. The 
Leonards had gone to Italy, as Enghsh people do 
go there ; she had longed to be taken there, because 
it was the land of art and poetry, and music and old 
associations — the land of romance and loveliest na- 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 167 

ture ; he, because it was the right thing to have 
been there ; because it would please his wife ; and 
because he was promised a variety in the sporting 
amusements which were his only pleasure. 

Ah ! if those good world educators, who in early 
life crush the young shootings of the heart, and 
bhght its growth in their pestilential atmosphere, 
would but innaturate it with their poison and make 
it barren for ever ! how many a crime, as they are 
pleased to call it, would be spared .... But they 
only half do their work ; they cut off the fruit, but 
they leave the life remaining ; to wake at enmity 
with all it finds, and to speak only to betray. The 
Leonards were to go to Eome in the winter ; but 
for the hot months, as the style of friends whom he 
hked best to visit were not the sort which best 
suited her, and as she found the shores of an Italian 
lake a more agreeable retiring place, they came to a 
kind of a compromise. He took a villa near Como^' 
wliich she and her young child were to make their 
home ; while he, who had many acquaintances, re- 
ceived a dispensation from constant attendance, and 
was allowed to relieve the monotony by frequent 
absence, leaving her in a solitude which, if the 
truth must be told, was more agreeable than his 
society, and only coming back to her now and then 
for a week at a time. He liked her very well, but 
a longer tete-a-tete after four years of marriage 
fatigued him. It was at one of these angel visits 
that she had seen Markham. They inquired who 
he was, and were told he was an Englishman, and 



168 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

out of health. She had learned something more 
of him in that evening music, which told her he 
was not a common Englishman ; and Leonard, who 
had a theory of race, and helieved with all his heart 
in the absolute virtue of everything English, was 
very happy to call upon him. The visit was re- 
turned. Markham was not quite a model Saxon, 
and illness too was a drawbrack, a certain rude 
health being part of the national idea ; but Leonard 
liked him well enough to make this week a fort- 
night ; and, at the end of it, their new friend had 
become so intimate with them, that under plea of 
his requiring attendance, and with the excuse that 
they had found out a number of common acquaint- 
ances at home which in Italy made them seem 
almost to have claims upon one another, they had 
begged him to leave his lodgings and make their 
house his home. 

It was the very thing for Leonard. He had an 
excuse now for going away ; while before he had felt 
some compunction at leaving his wife so much 
alone, however poor a companion he felt he could 
be for her. But a nice pleasant fellow who played 
the flute and talked poetry would far more than 
supply his absence ; and, with the honest EngHsh 
confidence which is almost stupidity, he rejoiced for 
his lady's sake at the friend which had been found 
for her, and now stayed away as he pleased without 
care or anxiety. 

Women's eyes are rapid in detecting a heart which 
is ill at ease with itself, and, knowing the value of 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 169 

sympathy, and finding their own greatest happiness 
not in receiving it, but in giving it, with them to be 
unhappy is at once to be interesting. They never 
ask for others' sympathy with them ; they do not re- 
cognise their own troubles as of enough import- 
ance to any but themselves. But instinct teaches 
them their power; they know what they can be to 
others : they feel their gentle calHng and they follow 

it It is curious too, whether it be that 

people always admire most in others what they 
have the least in themselves — whatever be the reason 
— there is no kind Of suffering in which they take 
warmer interest, than the heart's sufferings over in- I 
tellectual perplexities. Many women have died of 
broken hearts, but no woman's heart ever broke in such 
a trial .... yet it is just those into which they are 
the least able to enter, that they seem most to sympa- 
thise in. Whether it be that such a case is a rare 
exchange from the vulgar personal anxieties of com- 
mon people, and they know that only a generous heart 
can feel deeply on a question in which all the world 
have as deep a stake as itself; whether, the danger 
being said to be so great, a sceptic seems brave and 
noble to risk it for the love of truth — I cannot tell 
why it is, but I think no more dangerous person than 
Markham could have been thrown in the way of Mrs. 
Leonard. His conversation was so unhke any she 
had ever heard before ; his manner was so gentle ; his 
disinterestedness in sacrificing his home, his friends, 
his fortune, as it seemed to her, was so truly heroic — 
that he almost appeared hke a being of another 



170 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

world to Ler; and, long before she had dared to think 
that her regard could he anything to him, she had at 
the bottom of her heart resolved that she would be 
all to him which others were not and ought to have 
been ; and, in intending to be his sister, had already 
begun to love him more dearly than any sister. 

Their worst danger lay in their security : neither 
of them had ever loved before, so that neither 
could detect the meaning of their emotions. If the 
idea of the possibihty of his loving a married 
woman, as husbands love, had been suggested to 
Markham, he would have driven it from him with 
horror; . . . . and she in her experience of marriage 
had had no experience of love; she did not know 
into how false a life she had betrayed herself. She 
did not know that she was unhappy with her hus- 
band ; her unrest was but of the vague indefinite kind 
that rises in a dreary heart which feels that it might 
be happy, yet cannot distinguish what it requires to 
make it so. Poor thing, she was only twenty- five ! 
Nature had sown the seeds in her of some of the 
fairest of her flowers, but had taken no care for 
their culture ; and they were lying still in the emrbyo, 
waiting for light and heart to wake them into life. . . . 
It were better they had been left to die unborn than 
that the light should have flowed in upon them from 
Markham. How can we help loving best those who 
first give us possession of ourselves ? All the day 
long they were together : living as they did, they 

could not help being so ; only parting at 

night for a few short hours to dream over the happy 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH, 171 

past day, and to meet again the next morning, the 
happier for their brief separation. It was a new life 
to him : what had often hung before him as a fairy- 
vision — what he had longed for, but never found; 
and here, as if sent down from heaven, was what more 
than answered to his wildest dreams. Now for the first 
time he found himself loved for himself — slighted and 
neglected as he had been .... suddenly he was sin- 
gled out by a fascinating woman, who made no secret 
of the pleasure his friendship gave her. All along 
his life he had turned with disgust from every word 
which was sullied with any breath of impurity; the 
poetry of voluptuous passion he had loathed. Alas ! 
it would have b^en better far for him if it had not 
been so. He would have had the experience of his 
fallen nature to warn him by the taste of the fruit 
which it had borne in others. 

Mrs. Leonard's Uttle girl, too, was not long in disco- 
vering that he was her most delightful companion. 
It was easy for children to love Markham ; he knew 
how to abandon himself; and there they sat these 
two, the child the third; the common element in 
which their hearts could meet; Leonard seldom 
paid much attention to the little Annie, and she 
transferred her duty as well as her love to her friend ; 
and when she would wind her fingers into his hair 
as she sat upon his knee, and kiss him and call him 
papa, he could meet her mother's sweet smihng eyes 
with a smile as innocent and unconscious as her 
own. Through the heat of the day they stayed in 
the cool drawing-room. If Annie was sleeping, 

I 2 



J 72 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

she would draw or work, and Markham would 
read. He read well, for he read generally his own 
favourites which he knew, so that, unless she looked 
at him, the words fell from him as if they were his 
own. Nor less happy was she when, instead of 
reading, he would talk to her, and, never having 
known a willing listener hefore, would now pour out 
the long pent-up stream of his own thoughts and 
feelings. Weak Markham ! in the intense interest 
with which she hung upon his lips, he fancied he 
saw interest in the subject, which was only interest 
in himself. 

In the evenings they would saunter down to 
the boat-house, and go out upon the lake. They 
seldom took a servant to row them ; it was more 
pleasant to be alone : they felt it was, though they 
had not told themselves why it was ; ah ! how near 
are two hearts together when they understand each 
other without expression. 

They were both passionately fond of music. He 
always took his flute, .... she would sing when 
he was tired of playing, and each soon learnt to feign 
fatigue for the pleasure of listening to the other. 

It would be easy to linger over these scenes, yet 
they can give but small pleasure to us. Those two 
might be happy in them, only feeling themselves 
gliding along a sunny stream between flowery mea- 
dow banks ; but we, who hear the roar of the catar- 
acts, can ill pardon the delirium which, only Hstening 
to the sweet voices of the present, holds its ears 
tight closed against every other .... So wise are 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 173 

we for each other .... while each one of us has 
his own small dream, too, over which he, too, is slum- 
bering as foolishly as they, and is as much the mark 
of his wide-eyed neighbour's scorn. 

Week hurried after week ; when they met in the 
morning, they made their plans for the day, each 
sure that the other's pleasure was what each was most 
designing for. " lis commen9aient a dire nous. Ah, 
qu'il est touchant, ce nous prononce par 1' amour." . . . 
And it was par I'amour. The altered tone of their 
voices showed it; the hesitating tenderness of their 
glances showed it; the hand hngering in the hand 
when it had far more than said its morning greeting 
or its evening parting; and yet they did not know, 

.... They will soon know it now The 

two metals are melting fast in the warm love fire ; 
they are softening and flowing in and out, vein within 

vein, a few more degrees of heat, and then 

A month had passed, still Leonard did not return. 
Letters came instead of Leonard. He knew his 
wife was happy, he said : and as nothing made him 
so happy as to know that she was so, and as he could 

not add to it, he was going with Count to a 

castle in the Apemiines. He would be absent another 
six weeks, or perhaps two months; when he would 
return finally to stay till their removal to Eome ; 
where Markham was to be persuaded to go with 
them. 

Markham had not been very well again. His 
chest had been troublesome; he had caught cold 
from staying too late upon the lake, and, for a day 



174 THE NEMESIS OF EAITH. 

or two, was unable to leave the sofa. One very hot 
afternoon, Mrs. Leonard had been np-stairs for some 
little time with Annie ; and, on her return, he was 
sleeping : she glided noiselessly to his side and sat 
down. Some few intense enjoyments are given us 
in life; among them all, perhaps, there is none wdth 
so deep a charm as to sit by the side of those we 
love, and watch them sleeping. Sleep is so inno- 
cent, so peaceful in its mystery and its helplessness; 
and sitting there we can fancy ourselves the guardian 
angels holding off the thousand evils imagination 
paints for ever hanging over what is most precious, 
most dear to us. The long deep-drawn breathing ; 
the smile we love to hope is called up over the 
features by our own presence in the heart; there 
are no moments in life we would exchange for the 
few we have spent by the side of these. What 
thoughts, in that long half-hour, passed through 
the lady's mind, I cannot tell. Markham felt that 
she was close to him ; he was sleeping so lightly, 
tliat it was rather he would not than he could not 
rouse himself, to wake and break so sweet a charm. 
She was bending over him; he felt her breath 
tremble down upon his lips ; her long ringlets were 
playing upon his cheek with their strange- electric 
touches. As she gazed down so close upon him, 
she forgot her self-command; a tear fell upon his 
face. He opened his eyes, and they met hers full 
and clear. She did not turn away; no confusion 
shook into her features. She was but feeling how 
dear, how intensely dear he was to her ; and there 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 175 

was no room for any other thought. One arm was 
leaning over the end of the sofa behind his head ; 
the other had fallen down, and was resting on a 
cushion by her side. Her look, her attitude, those 
passionately tender tears, all told him the depth, 
the bewildering depth of her love. He caught the 
hand which lay beside him, and pressed it to his 
lips ; and, as it lay upon them, he felt it was not 
only his own which held it there. Dear, dear Mrs. 
Leonard, was all he could say. How poor and yet 
how full ! Not long volumes of love poetry and 
wildest passion could bear more of tenderness to 
the ear which could catch their intonation than 
these few words. Their lips formed no sound, only 
they trembled convulsively. They wished, and 
knew not what they wished; a minute passed, 
another, another, and still he lay there unmoving, 
and she was kneeUng at his side. Her hand was 
still clasped in his, and they felt each other's beating 
hearts in their wild and wilder pulsations; from 
time to time the fingers closed tighter round their 
grasp, and thoughts they could not, dared not utter, 
thrilled through and through them. They did not 
utter them. It was something in the after- struggle 
to feel that at least no words, no fatal words, had 
passed. Their treacherous consciences cheated them 
into a delusive satisfaction that as yet, at least, they 
had not sinned. How long a time passed by they 
knew not, for time is only marked by change of 
thought and sliifting feehng, and theirs was but one 
long- absorbing consciousness of a dehcious present. 



176 THE NEMESIS OF FATTH. 

But tlie change came at last. Interruption, not 
irom witliin, but from the outer world which they had 
forgotten. Ah, Heaven ! that at such a moment 
such a messenger was sent to break the spell. There 
was a knock, and the door handle turned faintly ; 
she started. It was more, perhaps, from the in- 
stinctive dehcacy wliich would hide its deepest feel- 
ings from common eye, tlian from any sense of 
guilt, and yet something, something shot through 
her she would have ill Hked to explain to herself. 
She sprung up, and threw herself in a chair as the 
door opened; and httle Annie came tottering in, 
came in bright and innocent, in there where the 
two friends were she loved so dearly, to hide her 
laughing face on the knees of mamma. 

It was more than Markliam could bear. Far bet- 
ter he could have faced her husband in his anger — 
better have borne, perhaps, at that moment to have 
heard his summons to the judgment bar, than that 
bright presence of unsuspicious innocence. He 
started from the sofa, and holding liis hands before 
his face, conceaHng himself from he knew not what, 
only feeling how ill it all was now with him, and 
seeming to meet the all -seeing Eye wherever his own 
eye fell ; he ran out of the room, and, hurrying to 
his closet, flung himself in an agony upon liis bed. 
The child looked wonderingiy at Mm. " Mamma," 
she said, "is Mr. Sutherland ill ? go to him, mamma 
— take me, and let us make him happy." Mrs. 
Leonard's teal's burst in streams over her httle face, 
from which she dried them off again witli passionate 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 177 

kisses; and, flinging herself upon her knees, she 
prayed that Heaven would strengthen her and for- 
give her if she was doing wrong. 

And yet God helps not those who do not help 
themselves, and she had not the strength to fulfil 
her share of the condition. She hoped for strength 
to control her feelings, and yet she could not com- 
mand herself to send the temptation from her. 
Twice she moved towards her writing-table : a note 
should go to Markham, and tell him, pray him, for 
both their sakes, to go away and leave her. Twice 
her heart failed. The third time the emotion rose, 
it was not strong enough to move her from her seat. 
And then insidious reason pressed up to urge a 
thousand arguments that it was far better he should 
stay. Both he and she laiew themselves now : she 
knew him too well to fear that Markham was one 
of those men who, themselves yielding to every 
emotion, think less of the woman who is only as 
weak, no weaker, than themselves. No, he was too 
human to have withdrawn his respect fr'om her; 
but they were on their guard now, and could never 
be in danger again. So sad, too, so lonely as he 
had been ; and now his health so delicate ; and she 
who had promised to be all to him wliich others 
should have been — she who, perhaps, alone imder- 
stood him, and could sympathise with him. How 
could she, why should she, send him from her ? 
Her husband, too, what reason could she give to 
him ? Why need it be ? Because she loved him 
— because he loved her. Surely that was a strange 

I 3 



178 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

reason ; and, besides, tliey knew that before. Often 
and often they bad said bow dear tbey had become 
to one another. And now what difference ? Be- 
cause she would gladly have been more to him than 
she could be — because she felt (she did not deny it 
to herself) that she would sooner have been his 
wife than Leonard's. But why ? because they could 
not be all to one another, must they be as nothing ? 
Dear friends they had been, and might still be, and 
then — and then — there was something cowardly in 
flying from temptation — mere temptation. How 
far nobler to meet and overcome our feelings than 
basely to fly from them ! She had duties — dear 
duties — to Markham as well as to her husband; 
she would forget tliis afternoon, he would forget it, 
and all would be as it had been. 

There was something still which she had not ex- 
plained — she had not satisfied : the last nerve of 
conscience which she had failed to paralyse still 
whispered it was all wrong — it was sophistry and 
madness ; but the dull unimpassioned voice was 
unheard among the voluptuous melodies of her 
wishes ; and like the doomed city, which shrunk 
from the voice of the prophetess, she pushed its 
warnings from her as idle superstition. 

When they met again at the tea table, all was not 
as it had been ; such as that it could never be again. 
Markham^ too, in his silent room had felt that there 
was no safety for them but in parting ; and the same 
devil of sophistry had been at his ear whispering to 
him. He had long left off writing, even thinking ; 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 179 

that was over when he had ceased to he alone. He 
had been in the trial of life since then, where the sun 
and the wind had fallen upon his theories to test them. 
Alas ! where were they ? Whirling like the sibyl's 

idle leaves before the passion gust Unequal to 

the effort of a final resolution, yet still forcing him- 
self to do something, he made a compromise with 
his sense of duty. He would do a little if he would 
not do all, and he wrote to Leonard urging his re- 
turn. Unable to give the real reason, he invented 
false reasons : he said his wife was delicate — he said 
that for opinion's sake it was better her husband 
should, by a more frequent presence, show, at least, 
his approval of his own intimacy with her; that 
he could not urge this upon her himself as an oc- 
casion for his own departure; and, therefore, he 
had thought it better to write openly to Mm. In 
this way he satisfied himself that he had done all 
he need do, and, let the future be what it would, he 
had ceased to be responsible. 

Fools, and blind ! They might have read each 
the answer to their delusive pleadings, each in their 
common embarrassment. They were uneasy when 
alone ; their voices trembled as they spoke ; they 
made no allusion to the past ; they could not speak 
of it : it would have been far better if they could. 
In open speaking and mutual confession then, there 
would, at least, have been a chance of safety for 
them; their game would have been all upon the 
board, and they would have taken counsel. We are 
often strong enough to persuade another against our 



180 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

own wishes, when we have ceased to be able to per- 
suade ourselves. But this neither of them dared to 
begin to do. Perhaps it was impossible. Strange ! 
they fancied they intended to be less together, and 
yet their outer lives went on as before. They left 
off for a few days saying " we," but their eyes said 
it with deeper tenderness than ever their hps had 
done. They shrunk openly from each other's gaze, 
yet each would catch the opportunity, when the 
other's was turned away, to look as they had never 
dared to look before ; and now they could feel the 
glances which they did not see, thrilling through them 
like those on that memorable afternoon. Leonard's 
answer came. It was what Markham knew it would be 
when he wrote, though he had not confessed it to 
himself: — "He was sorry his wife was out of health, 
but Markham was a better sick-nurse than he was ; 
he would not hear of his leaving her. As to the 
world, what had the world to do with him ? He 
knew them both, and could trust them too well to 
let any such folly touch him ;" — and such other con- 
fiding madness as so often in this world makes love 
to ruin. 

And Markham did not go. He never thought of 

going now. His conscience was satisfied with what 

he had done. Unsteady as it was, and without the 

\ support which a strongly believed reHgious faith had 

j once provided for it, he experienced at last what so 

I long he had denied, that to attempt to separate mora- 

I lity from religion is madness ; that religion, reduced to 

"ia^entiment resting only on internal emotion, is like 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 181 

a dissolving view, which will change its image as 
the passions sliift their focal distances ; that, un- 
realized in some constant external form, obeying 
inclination, not controlling it, it is but a dreamy 
phantom of painted shadow, and vanishes before 
temptation as the bright colours fade from off the 
earth when a storm covers the sun. 

Eather, in a mind like Markham's, unsupported 
as his mind was, there is no conduct to which these 
vague emotions will not condescend to adapt them- 
selves, and which they will not varnish into love- 
liness. If there be one prayer which, morning, 
noon, and night, one and all of us should send up 
to God, it is, '' Save us from our own hearts ! " Oh ! 
there is no He we will not tell ourselves. The en- 
chanted Armida garden of love! — how like, how like 
it is to Paradise ! Dreams, delusion, fantastic pre- 
judice it may be called, which a strong mind should 
spurn from it as a fable of the nursery— ay, should 
spurn — if it can. Are not ashes bitter on the 
tongue, though you bring proof in all the logic 
figures that they are sweet as Hybla honey ? And 
those pleasures which are honey- sweet to the first 
taste, is there not the sting with its venom-bag lying 
unseen? Ah! we know not; we know not; we 
know nothing. But something we can feel ; and what 
is it to us what we know, when we are miserable ? 
All men may not feel so. There are some who, as 
Jean Paul says, Mithridates-Hke, feed on poison, 
and suffer nothing from it; but all tender hearts, 
w^ho remember the feehng of innocence, will try 



182 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

long before they can reason away tlie bitterness out 
of pleasure which once they have beheved not in- 
nocent. It is ill changing the creed to meet each 
rising temptation. The soul is truer than it seems, 
and refuses to be trifled with. 

Day followed after day, bringing with it what it 
was God's great will should be. I will not pause 
over these sad weeks of intoxicating delirium. If 
they did not fall as vulgar minds count falling, what 
is that to those who look into the heart? Her pro- 
mise of her heart's truth was broken ; and he loved 
her as he should not love; as once, he would have 
loathed himself if he could have believed he could 
ever love the phghted wife of another. I will not 
judge them. Alas, what judgment could touch 
them is past and over now ! 

It is strange, when sometliing rises before us as a 
possibility which we have hitherto believed to be 
very dreadful, we fancy it is a great crisis ; that 
when we pass it we shall be different beings ; some 
mighty change will have swept over our nature, and 
we shall lose entirely all our old selves, and become 
others. — Much as, in another way, girls and boys 
feel towards their first communion, or young men 
to their ordination, which mechanically is to effect 
some great improvement in them, there are certain 
things which we consider sacraments of evil, which 
will make us, if we share in them, wholly evil. Yet, 
when the thing, whether good or evil, is done, we 
find we were mistaken ; we are seemingly much the 
same — neither much better nor worse ; and then 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 183 

we cannot make it out ; on either side there is a 
weakening of faith ; we fancy we have been taken 
in ; the mountain has been in labour, and we are 
perplexed to find the good less powerful than we 
expected, and the evil less evil. 

Only, long after, when the first crime has begot- 
ten its children, and the dark catalogue of conse- 
quences follows out to make clear their parent's 
nature ; when in lonely hours we are driven in upon 
ourselves, and the images of our unfallen days come 
flitting phantom-like around us, gazing in so sadly, 
like angels weeping for a lost soul ; when we are 
forced to know what then we were, and, side by 
side with it, stands the figure of what we have be- 
come, it is then that what has passed over us comes 
out in its real terrors. Our characters change as 
world eras change, as our features change, slowly 
from day to day. Nothing is sudden in this world. 
Inch by inch ; drop by drop ; line by line. Even 
when great convulsions shatter down whole nations, 
cities, monarchies, systems, human fortunes, still 
they are but the finish, the last act of the same long- 
preparing, slowly devouring change, in which the 
tide of human affairs for ever ebbs and flows, with- 
out haste, and without rest. Well, so it was with 
Markham. This final fall of his was but the result 
of the slow collapsing of his system. His moral 
nature had been lowered down to it before he 
sinned; he did not feel any such mighty change; 
he was surprised to findhow easily it lay upon him. 
Then, in the first dehrious trance of happiness, he 



184 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

seemed to laugh to himself at his old worn-out pre- 
judices. He had been worshipping an idol, which 
he had but to dare to disobey, to learn how helpless 
the insulted Deity was to avenge itself. He could 
still cheat himself with words. He had not yet heard 
the voice of God calhng him. His eyes were opened, 
not as yet to evil, but only to find himself in a new 
existence, which he could even dream was a higher 
and a nobler one. And she — she — when a woman's 
heart is flowing over for the first time with deep 
and passionate love, she is all love. Every faculty 
of her soul rushes together in the intensity of the 
one feehng ; thought, reflection, conscience, duty, the 
past, the future, they are names to her light as the 
breath which speaks them ; her soul is full. Mark- 
ham was all these to her ; her life, her hope, her 
happiness. Fearfully mysterious as it is, yet even 
love, which should never be, yet does not lose its 
nobleness ; so absolutely it can enthral a woman's 
nature, that self, that cunningest of demons, is de- 
ceived, and flies before the counterfeit. Her love 
is all her thought, her care, her worship. To die for 
Markham would have been as dehghtful to Helen 
as the martyr's stake to a saint. I say it is a fearful 
mystery that, if love like theirs be what all men say 
it is, such heroism for it is possible. Yet, indeed, it is 
but possible for woman, not for man ; a man can 
give his entire soul to an idea, not to a woman — 
some second thought, even with the highest of us, 
and in the most permitted relation, will always 
divide his place with her ; it is ever Abelard and 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 186 

Eloise ; Eloise loves Abelard all ; Abelard loves 
intellect and tlie battle of the truth. 

Well, on went the summer. They never looked 
forward, no thought of their guilt had yet intruded 
to disturb them. How could anything so beautiful 
be less than good ? Even Annie, Markham could 
again bear upon his knee, and could laugh and tell 
her stories as he used to do. They took her with 
them in their rambles ; she was their boat com- 
panion in their lovely evenings upon the water, and 
once, when the poor child was suffering from in- 
flammatory fever, no father could have watched 
more anxiously, no physician more carefully put 
out his skill for her than he did. 

At last September came. The finger of love is 
ineffectual on the wheel of Time ; and, though the 
summer was deepening in loveliness, the changing 
tints betrayed that they were but purchasing their 
beauty at the price of decay ; and now, as it grew 
clear that some change must come, something must 
happen soon, Markham began to gTow imeasy. 
In one month at furthest Leonard would return, and 
what was to follow then ? And his lips flagged in 
their eloquence, and the clouds began to gather 
again about his face — and she saw them, and dimly 
read the cause, which she feared to ask. It was 
a beautiful afternoon. They had gone, he, she, and 
Annie, to a distant island up the lake. They had 
taken a basket with them, and a few cold things, as 
they often did, and they were not going to return 
till the cool of the last dayhght. The island was 



186 THE NEMESIS OF EAITH. 

several miles away, and tliey had overstayed tlie 
time wlien prudence would have warned them home- 
wards^ in rambhng about the place, and making- 
sketches of an old ruined chapel, wliich on certain 
hohdays was still a place of pious pilgrimage. It 
wanted still an hour of dark, when they re-emharked, 
and as a Hght warm air had sprung up, and Mark- 
ham had taken a small sail with him, they still 
hoped they would be at home before it. Their 
anxiety was more for Annie than themselves. They 
had often overstayed the sunset, and laughed to 
find, when darkness came, how time had glided 
by with them ; but Annie had been ill, and was 
still delicate .... Well, the skiff was shooting away 
under the sunset; the purple sky above them, the 
purple wave below them ; they were sitting toge- 
ther in the stern, and Annie was scrambling about 
the boat, now listening to the rippling music of the 
water under the bow, now clapping her little hands 
in ecstasy at the lovely hght flashing and sparkling 
with a thousand glorious colours in the long frothy 
wake the thin keel had carved along the surface. 
Markham told her to come over to them and sit 
quiet; but they did not seem disposed to talk to 
her, and at last, under condition of her promising 
to be perfectly still, he consented to let her stay by 
herself under the sail, fenced in with cushions. 

They were sad those two, and, for a long time, 
silent. A painful unexplained uneasiness was hang- 
ing over both of them. Thoughts were playing 
across his mind which he feared to share with her. 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 187 

for fear he might strike some unlucky chord. If, 
as has been said, it be true that things which con- 
cern us most nearly have an atmosphere around 
them, which we feel when we are entering ; that, Hke 
birds before a storm, we are conscious of the coming 
change — perhaps it was another weight which was 
sinking down their spirits. 

At last, as when after we have been some time in 
darkness, our eyes expand, and objects slowly ghm- 
mer out before them into form, so their words 
began to flow out of the silence, and for the first 
time Markham spoke of the future. 

"Another month — and Leonard will return," he 
said, in a thick, half- stifled voice ...."" and 
then ? " 

"I am yours, Markham," she said. "Dear Mark- 
ham, you will never leave me ? " 

" Leave you ! Helen," he answered ; " never with 
my will ; but it may not be mine to choose." 

" Oh ! yes, yes, it will, it shall. Do not think 
I have not thought of it. I know what I am 
going to do." 

He looked inquiringly at her. "Leonard must 
know we love each other, Helen. We could not, if 
we would, conceal it from him." 

"Conceal it? Deceive him?" she answered, 
proudly. " No, not if he was as base as he is 
noble-minded and generous. Never." 

"Well!" he said, hesitating. 

" Well," she answered; " well, I will tell him all. 
I will throw myself at his feet, and ask his forgive- 



188 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

ness ; not for loving you, but for ever having been 
his. That was my sin ; to promise 1 knew not what, 
and what I could not fulfil," 

Markham smiled bitterly. 

" I will toll him," she went on ; "'I will tell him 
I never loved him; only till I kuew you I did not 
know it. I will do my duty ; I will be his servant, 
if he wishes it. I have done everything for him at 
home ; I will do all that, and far more than all — 
only as he cannot have my heart .... I ... . 
I . . . . Surely, if he cannot have it, my heart can 
be httle to him if I give it to you." 

Poor, poor thing, when she had hved in the 
world she had still hved out of it, and turned a 
deaf ear to its voices. She had no idea what she 
was doing. Ill instructed as she had been reh- 
giously, her instinct had recoiled from the worldly 
instruction which she might have learnt as a sub- 
stitute ; and she had no notion of right and wrong 
beyond what her heart said to her. 

"That is what you think, Helen," Markham 
answered. "Now, I will tell you what I think. 
When you tell him what I am to you, he will kill 
me, and for you " 

"For me; if it were so, I would die with you, 
Markham ; we cannot live without each other. If 
we have broken this world's laws, and must die, then 
love will give us strength." 

Markham shuddered. " We might fly," he said. 

"Is it really certain that he wiU separate us, 
Markham, as soon as he knows ?" 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. J 89 

"Certain," lie answered. "Every man would 
feel it Ms duty ; I should myself if I were as he is." 

"Markham, Markham," she said, passionately, 
"in all the world I have not a friend — not one; 
till I knew you I never knew what love, what 
friendship meant. There is none hut you on whom 
I can lean ; there is none to whom I can turn even 
in thought. Teach me, Markham, teach me ; what 
you tell me I will do." 

"There is no hope except in flight," he an- 
swered, huskily; "if you will leave all for me, I 
can offer you a home, though but a poor one, and 
myself, in exchange for what you lose." 

She was silent ; her head hung down ; he could 
not see the tears which were raining from her eyes. 

"We shall do what the world forbids," he con- 
tinued. " The world will punish us with its scorn. 
It is well. When we accept the consequences of 
our actions, and do not try to escape from them, we 
have a right to choose our own course, and do as 
we will." 

The last words scarce reached poor Helen's ear ; 
her heart was far away. 

"Tell me, Markham," she said (and she turned 
her eyes, swimming with tears, full upon him) — 
" tell me, do not deceive me ; you know the world's 
ways, or something of them. If I go with you, 
shall I ever see my child again ? " 

" I shall be all which will be left you then," he 
answered, slowly. " She is his child, and . . . ." 

" And her mother's touch would taint her ! Oh, 



190 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

no, no. Annie, my own darling. I cannot leave 
my child. No, Markliam, no ; all but that. I can- 
not . . . ." She sunk her head upon Ms shoulder, 
and her breast shook as if her heart would burst its 
prison home. 

Unliappy lady, wretched Markham, the solving 
of their problem was nearer than they dreamed of. 
Look your last, poor baby, on that purple sunset. 
Turn, gaze out your full on your ill-fated mo- 
ther. The angels are already cutting their swift 
way down the arch of heaven to bear away 
your soul. Yon mountain, whose snow-crusted 
peaks are melting into the blue of heaven, will 
again put on their splendour, and glitter crimson- 
flushed in the glories of the morning — but you will 
never see them more. One day, and yet another, 
and the sun which rises on your eyes will be the 
spirit's sun that lights the palaces of heaven when 
the blessed are in their everlasting home. Gaze on, 
gaze on upon your mother ! but a httle, and then, it 
must be there, if ever, that you will meet her any more. 
The pure and innocent are there ; you may meet her 
there, for she loves you with a pure and holy love, 
and love unbroken here is never broken there. 

The breeze had fallen with the sunset. The 
crimson had melted off the clouds ; a few dissolving 
specks of gray about the sky were all that was left 
of the glorious vision, and through the purple air 
the evening star streamed down in its sad, pas- 
sionate, heart-breaking loveliness. The child had 
for a long time lain still, as she had been told. At- 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 191 

last, tired of not being amused, she had crawled out 
from under the clothes in which they had wrapped 
her against the evening chill, and had begun to 
find amusement for herself in looking over the 
boat's side, watching the rippHng bubbles as they 
floated by ; and the images hanging in the depths, 
as if the water was a window through which she 
was looking down. It was so odd that the bubbles 
moved by, and the stars did not at all, but went along 
with them alwa^^^s so exactly in the same place. 
They were not observing her as they talked. The 
boat moved slower and slower as the surface of the 
lake grew still. The deep hum of the night-beetle 
sweeping by sounded strangely on her ear. The 
moon rose up into the sky. The rays shone cold 
into her face, and the little thing shrunk and shi- 
vered, and yet she gazed, and gazed. There it was 
so close to her ; just under the boat's edge ; rolling 
and dancing on the wave that washed from off the 
bow. She could almost touch it, so near it was, a 
long rolhng sheet of gold. She dipped her fingers 
into the water. It felt warm, dehciously warm, 
and, when she held up her hand, the wet skin 
ghttered in the light. It was the water then that 
was so beautiful ; and if she could only reach the 
ripple it was all gold there. She leant over below 
the sail, and as she stretched out her hand her 
weight brought the boat's side lower and lower 
down; just then a faint, a very faint momentary 
freshening of the air swept into the sail ; the gun- 
wale sunk suddenly, and the water rushed up her 



193; THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

arm into her chest. She started hack. They saw 
her then, though they had not seen what had hap- 
pened to her, and they told her to he hack again 
where she had heen. She was quite wet ; hut the 
water seemed so warm and so pleasant, and they 
might scold her if she told, and she lay hack, and 
did not tell them, and sunk asleep as she was. 



Two hours had passed, and now they were at 
home again, and in Mrs. Leonard's room. The 
child's wet clothes had heen taken off her ; she was 
in her little hed, breathing thick and heavily. 
Markham was standing hy her from time to time, 
laying his finger upon her wrist, and Helen on her 
knees at the bedside, with her eyes fixed upon his 
face, and fearing to ask anything lest her ear should 
be obhged to hear what she already read there too 
plainly. < The fever was gathering every moment. 
When they took the httle thing out of the boat, 
she could not tell him coherently what had happened 
to her, she could only moan out that she was very 
cold, and muttered something about the moon. 
Since she had been taken home she had not 
spoken, but every moment her forehead was growing 
hotter, her poor damp skin parched and dry, and 
her pulse quicker and more feeble. 

Presently she opened her eyes, and stared wildly 
round her. 

'" Mamma, mamma," she cried. Helen leant over 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 198 

her, and kissed her hurning cheek, hut it did not 
seem as if Annie was calhng her, or knew her, or 
saw her. 

" Mamma, mamma, pretty mamma, take me to 
you ; mamma, why cannot I come to you ? " 

" I am here, my own darUng, my own child," 
Helen said. 

" You are not mamma. Go away, you are not 
mamma. There is mamma standing there, there, by 
the bed ; beautiful ! who is that in white ? why do you 
look at me so ? Yes, I wish to go, why can't I go ? 
There, in the pretty moonlight on the water." 

" She is wandering," Markham whispered ; " she 
does not see — hush !" 

" Where am I, mamma ? I was never here before. 
Wliere is it? Is this heaven? Where is God? 
God is in heaven ; I don't see him, I only see hght 
and flowers. Ah, it is all gone, dark, dark, dark." 

She shut her eyes and rolled her head upon the 
pillow, moaning painfully. 

They had scarcely spoken yet, the other two. 

" Markham, tell me," said Helen, with a fearful 
calmness, ** is there any hope ? " 

'^ God forbid that I should say there is none, 
Helen," he answered slowly. 

'* Well," she said quickly, " tell me all, I can 
bear it." 

" All that man can do is done," he answered ; 
" the fever will be at its height to-morrow ; till 
then I can tell nothing, we must leave her to God." 
It was all that passed between them. What more 

K 



194 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

at such a time could they say, with this Heaven's 
Hghtning hlazing before their eyes? 

The night wore on ; the shadow of the heavy cur- 
tains crept slowly across the room; the light was pain- 
ful to them, they had buried it in a shade ; they had 
neither of them changed their dress, and, together, 
at either side the httle bed, they sat out those awful 
hours. The room was deathly still ; no sound but 
the heavy breathing of the child, and now and then 
some strange broken words wliich her sphit was 
speaking far away, and the sinking body was but 
faintly echoing. There are some blows which are too 
terrible to paralyse us, and, instead of driving con- 
sciousness away, only waken every faculty into a 
dreadful sensibility. Nature has found a remedy 
for the heaviest of ordinary calamities in the torpor 
of despair ; but some things are beyond her care, 
perhaps beyond her foresight. Perhaps, in laying 
down the conditions of humanity, she sbrunk from 
seeing the fall extreme of misery which was pos- 
sible to it. We will turn in silence from Mrs. 
Leonard's heart: would to God she could have 
turned from it herself ! 

Once she raised her eyes toMarkham; the moon- 
light lay upon his features, and so ghastly pale they 
were, that even the spectral light itself could lend 
them a warmer colour. While there was anything 
left to do, so long his heart had left Ms mind undis- 
turbed to act ; but now reflection woke again, and 
the past, the present, and the fature shot before him 
in terrible review. Let Annie hve, or let her die. 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 195 

he felt God had spoken to liim, and he was slowly 
moulding in liimself Ms answer. Was it the voice 
of warning, or the voice of judgment ? To-morrow 
would show. 

The morrow came ; the sun rose and went his way ; 
so slowly he had not gone the long summer through ; 
he sank down, and the evening fell upon the earth, 
and now the crisis was come. They had never left 
the room, they had taken no food, they had scarcely 
spoken to each other. From time to time Markham 
had turned to the child, had felt her pulse, and 
poured cooling medicine hetween her burning hps, 
and still life and death hung uncertain in the trem- 
bling balance. Mrs. Leonard had been lying for 
an hour, in the greatest exhaustion, on the sofa; 
about six o'clock Markham woke her, and said, 
firmly, " The crisis is come now ; now sit here and 
watch her; if at the end of another half hour she 
is ahve, she will recover." He himself moved 
over to the open window. There lay the deep, dark 
mountains, and th» silver, lake, the blue cloudless 
sky bending over them in unutterable beauty ; the 
young swallows were sweeping to and fro far up in 
their airy palace ; the pale blue butterflies were 
sauntering from flower to flower, and every tree was 
thrilhng in the evening air with the impassioned 
melodies of the nightingales. Never, never since 
the sad wanderers flung their last lingering look on 
the valleys of that fair Eden from which they and 
all their race were for ever exiled, had human eyes 
yet gazed upon a loveher earthly scene than that 

K 2 



196 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

"wHcli now lay out below the window where Markham 
was standing. Alas, alas ! when the heart is indeed 
breaking, with a grief beyond hope, beyond con- 
sohng, how agonizing is the loveliness of nature! 
It speaks to us of things we cannot reach. It 
mocks our fevered eyes with Tantalus visions of 
paradise, which are not for us; floating before us 
like phantoms in a dream, and gliding ficom our grasp 
as we stretch our arm to seize them. It is well, 
yes, it is well, but it is hard for the bruised heart to 
feel it so. All, all nature is harmonious, and must 
and shall be harmony for ever ; even we, poor men, 
with our wild ways and frantic wrongs, and crimes, 
and follies, to the beings out beyond us and above 
us, seem, doubtless, moving on our own way under 
the broad dominion of universal law. The wretched 
only feel their wretchedness : in the universe all 
is beautiful. Ay, to those lofty beings, be they 
who they will, who look down from their starry 
thrones on the strange figures flitting to and fro 
over this earth of ours, the wil(i^ recklessness of us 
mortals with each other may well lose its painful 
interest. Why should our misdoings cause more 
grief to them than those of the lower animals to 
ourselves ? Pain and pleasure are but forms of con- 
sciousness ; we feel them for ourselves, and for those 
who are hke ourselves. To man alone the doings of 
man are wrong ; the evil which is with us dies out 
beyond us ; we are but a part of nature, and blend 
with the rest in her persevering beauty. 

Poor consolers axe such thoughts, for they are but 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 197 

thoughts, and, alas ! our pain we feel. Me they may 
console, as I think over this farce tragedy of a world, 
or even over the nearer sorrows of a friend like Mark- 
ham Sutherland. For Markham himself, in this 
half hour — they were far enough from his heart. 

He was dreaming again of old times, of the old 
Markham, once simple and pure as that poor dying 
child, who could once look up with trusting heart to 
Ms Father in heaven, and pray to Him to keep him 
cleau from sin ; and his sick heart shrunk appalled 
from the wretched thing which he had become, and 
the gulf which was yawning under his feet. 

A cry from Helen roused him;^he collected him- 
self rapidly, and moved across the room to her. 
Annie's eyes were open, the flush of pain had 
passed from off her face ; she knew them both, and 
was feebly trying to stretch out her httle hands to- 
wards her mother. She was dying; her eyes were 
ghttering with a deep unearthly lustre from the 
visions on which she had been gazing. They had 
but turned back for a moment, for a last good bye, 
and earth and all that was dear to her on earth 
would be lost then, to return no more. One look was 
enough for Markham ; he saw all was over, and he 
hid his face in his hands. " Good bye, mamma, I am 
going away; good bye, don't cry, dear mamma, I am 
very happy." The heavy eyehds drooped, sunk, rose 
again for one last glance — her mother's image only 
was all it caught, and the light went out for ever. 

That last thought had traced the tiny features 
into a smile. |flt was the smile, the same sweet 



198 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

smile Mrs. Leonard knew so well, wHcli night after 
night she had so often gazed upon, and had stood 
on tiptoe and held her breath lest she should break 
the sleeping charm. Ah ! she may speak now loud 
as she will, and have no fear of breaking slumber 
deep as tliis. Still lay the httle frame, still as the 
silent harp there before the window, but no cunning 
hand shall ever sweep those heart-strings to life; their 
sweet notes shall never, never speak again. 

"It is over," Markham said, in a low voice. 
" She is in peace now. All-righteous God !" 

Mrs. Leonard had flung herself upon the bed. 
The tears burst gut, and fell in streams over her 
dead child's face. She drew it to her breast, where 
once its baby lips had gathered life and strength. 
Ah! wdiy may it not be again? Her tears rained 
down, but they were not tears with which the 
bruised heart unloads the burden of its sorrow, but 
the bitter, burning tears of bewildered agony. 

Her Annie, • her darhng ; all she had till she 
knew Markham ; she who had first made Hfe de- 
hghtful to her; who had taught her heart first to 
love ; now dead, gone, torn from her ; and, oh ! 
worse, worse; their own doing. How it was she 
did not know ; but their fault it was. Her nature 
was too weak to bear so comphcated a misery, and 
her mind broke into disorder. Surely, yes, surely, 
it must have broken, or thoughts hke these could 
never have to come to her now. 

She rose steadily, and walked up to Markham, 
and laid her hand upon Ms arm. % 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 199 

" Markliam," she said, "" it is for my sin. Would, 
oil, would it had been myself, not she, who has been 
taken 1 It is for my sin in marrying her father. 
It was an offence against earth and Heaven, and 
the earthly trace of it is blotted out, and its memory 
written in my heart in letters of fire. Now, Mark- 
ham, if I am not to die too, take me away. I can 
never see him again." 

It would be difficult to conceive words which at 
the moment could have shocked Markham more 
fearfully. He, too, had seen Heaven's finger in 
what had been ; but he thought it was a punislnnent 
for the sin which he had wished to commit — a stern 
and fearful interposition to save him from com- 
pleting it. Strange, too, that even with such 
thoughts, serious as they really were, it was not 
duty, it was not Helen, which was predominant with 
Mm, it was himself. Not so much that God would 
prevent a sin as that He would save him. Sceptic, 
philosopher as he was, this was what he made of it. 
On her it had come as a punishment for loving 
him, and for having allowed him to love her. 

"What, Helen; with your child dead before you? 
at such a moment to speak of . . . of . . . what 
I dare not tliink of. Oh, Helen, Helen! we must 
think of duty now. Think of your husband." 

"Markham," she said, with dreadful calmness, 
" these are strange words .... from you. Hus- 
band I have none. You taught me that I had 
none." And there, she added, pointing with her 
finger, " Is not there a witness too ? " 



200 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

"Oh! tliis is too much/' Markham cried; ''she 
is mad ; I cannot bear it." He rushed out of the 
room. His own teaching — with him hut words — 
words in which feehngs he now recoiled from, had 
fasliioned themselves into a creed which he had 
hut dreamt that he heheved — and now coming 
hack upon him so dreadfully. It is not so easy 
a business this turning back out of the wrong way. 
These words and deeds of ours we scatter about us 
so recklessly find deeper holding ground than in 
our own memory. It is not enough to say I will 
turn and go back. What if I must carry back 
with me all those whom I have taken down ; if I 
have bound up their fate with mine ; if, after all, 
Hfe be sometliing more than these thoughts and 
feelings, and repentances — not altogether that sha- 
dow of a world with which we have been playing. 
Others, besides unhappy Esau, find no place for 
repentance, though they seek for it ever so care- 
fully. He hurried to his own room, and, shutting 
himself in and double-locking the door, he threw 
himself exhausted upon his bed. He had taken no 
food all day. Mind and body were worn to the 
last. He heard her step follow him. He heard 
her voice imploring him to speak with her ; but for 
a moment if it must be, but still to speak to her. 
But he would not, he durst not ; and, giddy between 
weakness and excitement, he sunk into unconscious- 
ness. He must have lain many hours as he was, 
for the day was breaking when he came to himself 
again. He had lain down in his clothes ; he rose 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 201 

weak and worn, and disordered, but the heavy 
sense of wretchedness which entered in with his 
returning consciousness left him no strength to 
collect or arrange himself. He opened the window, 
and looked out. A thick grey fog lay over the 
valley, but the air was cool; he thought he would 
go out. He stole down the stairs. He paused 
opposite her door. Twice he turned to enter. As 
often Ms heart failed liim ; he feared to see the 
state in which she might be. He listened; he 
heard her breatliing, and then ghded noiselessly 
to the outer door, which he opened, and went out. 
The walk before him led down to the lake ; up 
that walk he had come the last time with her, 
and with one who would not pass that way again. 
He followed it mechanically now, and wandered 
slowly along the shore. The tops of the mountains 
were showing out faintly above the mist, so quiet it 
was, so still, so peaceful. Ah, it was little to him 
how it was with the fever in his own breast ; yet 
his mind was quick in catching every image wliich 
would add to his agony. Turn where he would, 
some dear spot fell upon his eyes round which a 
thousand passionate memories were encircled. There 
was the httle bay where he had first met her. There 
was his own old little cottage with the jessamine 
twining about the windows, where till that hour, 
that fatal hour, he had dreamed of a happy home. 

And now Yet even the scenes of the love 

which he shrunk from were beautiful as he looked 
back. No unhallowed hght seemed resting on 

K 3 



• 202 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

them now, and in the shrine of the past they lay 
sad, and sweet, and innocent. Yes, all was beau- 
tiful, except the wretched present and Ms own most 
wretched self What should he do ? Go with her. 
He thought of it ; yet he knew that he did not love 
her — that he had never truly loved her. He had 
felt remorse and sorrow for it ; and it would he as 
easy to regret a prayer or a saintly action as to he 
sorry for having truly loved. Why, oh, why has 
love so many counterfeits, such cunning imitations ? 
No, he would not, even if his eyes had not been 
opened to the sin — he would not fly with her. 
What future would there he for them — the world's 
outcasts — if love was not there to make the bitter 
cup more tolerable? He could not hope again to 
weave around him the shadows of feeling to wliich 
for the last three months he had surrendered him- 
self To forsaken truth, to neglected duty, we can 
return; but tie up again the broken threads .of 
a dream out of which we have been awakened — 
never. 

He walked on along the lonely sands, his 
uncovered hair moist in the morning air, and the 
morning breeze playing coldly about his disordered 
dress. But sense was lost in the dreary wilder- 
ness of desolation which lay around his soul; he 
only felt his misery, and pain would have been a 
relief to him. What should he do ? Go back to 
Helen? How go back? How bear to look on her 
again? Never, oh, never. It could not be. He 
feared to look upon his work. He feared to hear 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 203 

tlie voices moaning round the ruin which, he had 
made — to hear — to hear (was she mad, or was it 
his own self that spoke) — to hear Ms own teaching- 
echoed back to him ; the monster to which he had 
given birth, and which now haunted him instinct 
with a spectral vitahty. To see again that unhappy 
lady who, till she knew him, had been happy in a 
child whom she loved, in a husband whom she was 
ignorant that she did not love ; and who, now that 
his accursed star had shed its baneful light upon 
her, in three little months, ere the leaves which 
were then bursting in their young life had turned 
to decay, was husbandless, friendless! Oh! and 
most of all dreadful, her child too. He could not 
leave her that .... gone, all gone ; and he had 
done it. To leave her there, he knew it too well, 
was to leave her to die. And yet he must leave 
her. Himself, which was all that remained to her, 
that too he must tear away. And then, in these 
wretched hours, his wasted Hfe came back upon 
Mm ; Ms blighted hopes, Ms withered energies — a 
curse to Mmself, he had been the grief of his family 
— of his friends ; of all who should have been most 
dear to him. There was a mark upon him; a 
miserable spell, a moral pestilence, wMch made him 
Ms own hell, and tainted whatever he approached. 
And now at last, when one had been found who 
loved him, loved him with a passion he dared not 
think of, this one he had destroyed for ever. What 
business had such a thing as he, " crawHng between 



204 • THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

earth and heaven," with such a trail beliind him ? 
If it was better that the murderer should die, than 
remain in the society to which he was a curse ; if it 
were better for any beings whose presence makes 
the misery of their fellow- creatures, that they perish 
from off the earth where they never should have 
been ; then surely it were better far for him. What 
future was there to which he could look forward? 
As was the past time so would the coming be. 
The Ethiopian does not change his skin. The 
slimy reptile which has left its track along the 
floor will not, for all its own care or others' chiding, 
lose its venom, and become pure. He was infected 
with the plague. Earth was lost to him. Heaven 
was a dreary blank. One by one, as he had wan- 
dered in the wilderness of speculation, the beacon 
hghts of Hfe had gone out, or sunk below the 
horizon. He only knew God by this last hght- 
ning flash, which had but shown Mm the abysses 
which environed him, and had left liis senses more 
bewildered than before. Death, as he dwelt upon 
it, grew more and more alluring. Years before the 
thought of destroying himself had floated before 
him as a possibility ; and with a kind of strange, 
unexplained impulse, by wliich our deeper nature, 
like that of animals, unreflectingly foresees its future 
necessities, he had provided himself with a deadly 
poison, which he always carried about his person. 
As he drew it out and gazed upon it, more and 
more clear it seemed to him that here was the goal 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 206 

to wliicli all was pointing. Eound this one light 
every shadow seemed to vanish. So he would 
expiate his sin So perhaps Helen's life might 
be saved. It would be easier for her to bear to 
know that he was dead, than to feel either that 
he had deceived or forsaken her, or to hope on in a 
restless anguish of disquietude. At any rate, as it 
was his hfe which had worked her ill, liis Hfe should 
be no longer; and so at least she would have a 
chance. For her, for all his friends to whom he 
had caused so much sorrow — for all those whom 
if he lived on he might hereafter meet and injure — 
oh ! for all, it was far, far the best. For liimself, 
one of two things he would find in the grave : 
either as that bodily framework, out of which such 
inharmonious life discords had arisen, became un- 
strung and Hfeless, the ill music that had poured 
from it would die away, and its last echo be for- 
gotten, the soul with the body dissolve for ever 

into the elements of which it was composed 

or else, if what he called Ms soul, his inward being, 
himself was indeed indissoluble, immortal, and in 
some sphere or other must live, and live, and live 
again, then he would find another existence where 
a fairer hfe might be found possible for him. At 
any rate it could not be worse. No, not that dark 
sulphurous home of torture, at the name of which 
he had once trembled, not hell itself, could be less 
endurable than the present .... There at least he 
would not do evil any more, he would only sufPer 
it ; and the keenest external agony which could be 



206 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

inflicted upon him lie would gladly take in change 
for the torment wliich was within him. His mind 
gTew calmer as it grew more determined. It is 
irresolution only, the inability from want of power, 
or will, or knowledge, to determine at all, which, 
leaves us open to suffering: resolution, however 
dreadful, determined resolution to do sometliing, 
restores us at once to rest and to ourselves .... 
At first he thought the moment of the determina- 
tion might as well be the moment of the act. 
Himself condemning himself to die, and his own 
executioner, with the means ready in his hands, he 
need not leave himself an interval of preparation. 
Why hear liis pain longer when he could at once 
leave it? But the intensity of his determination 
he felt presently had itself relieved him. As it was 
to he done judicially, it should he done gravely and 
calmly. He would set his house in order, and 
write a last letter to Helen, undoing as far as he 
could his own fatal work, and praying for her last 
forgiveness. 

The sun had long risen ; he had walked many 
miles, and, as the strain upon his mind grew lighter, 
his body began to sink and droop. At no great dis- 
tance from where he found himself, he remembered, 
was the cottage of a peasant with whom he had 
some acquaintance, and to whom, in the last win- 
ter, he had been of considerable assistance in 
curing him of a dangerous illness. There he 
thought he would go and remain for a few hours, 
till he had rested and refreshed himself. He 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 207 

dragged liimself painfully to the door ; it was open, 
and he went in without knocking. The man was at 
home, and started at the strange intnider so suddenly 
presenting himself; scarcely less surprised he was 
when he discovered who it was that lay under all 
that disorder. 

" Holy Virgin !" he cried ; " Signor Sutherland, 
what has happened to hring you here hke this ? " 

Markham was generally so scrupulous in his 
dress ; and, now he had no hat, his long hair was 
hanging matted over his face, his cheeks were sunk 
and hollow, and his eyes hloodshot from long care 
and watcliing. 

" It is nothing," he said ; " only I have been 
walking long, and am tired. If you will let me 
have something to eat, and a bed to lie down and 
rest on for a few hours ; and if you, in the mean- 
time, will go yourself into Como for me, I shall 
thank you." 

" To the world's end I will go for you, Signor ; 
but what ? " 

" Do not ask me any questions," Markham said; 
" but go for me, and do what I shall tell you, and 
you will be doing me a service." 

The man stared, but said nothing more; and, 
wliile his wife busied herself to get their strange 
guest's breakfast, he made ready for his walk. 

Markham sat down and wrote three notes ; one 
to his banker with directions for the payment of 
a few bills left unsettled in the town, and desiring 
them to make over what remained of his money in 



208 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

their hands to some public charity. The second 
was to the people of his old lodging. His clothes, 
and anytliing else they had of his, they were to 
keep for themselves ; but his books and manuscripts 
were to be packed together and sent to England to 
myself. He himself, he said, was going away, and 
it was uncertain when he might return. The last 
was to Helen : brief and scrawled with a shaking 
hand, and blotted with his tears. It was only to 
say that he was gone : he would write once more, 
but that she would never see him again. This one 
was to be left at the gate of the villa, and the man 
was to hurry on at once, without asking or answer- 
ing any questions. As soon as the notes were des- 
patched, he took some food and then threw himself 
on a bed in the inner room, and fell at once into a 
deep unbroken sleep. 

Como was not many miles distant; the messenger 
soon reached it, and finished his commissions ; these 
were difficulties more easily overcome than his curi- 
osity at the mysterious visit. He was leaving the 
town again without any acquaintance having fallen 
in his way to whom he might chatter out the won- 
der that disturbed him, when he encountered the 
priest at whose confessional he was occasionally 
present. He saluted him respectfully, and the fa- 
ther stopped him to ask some trifling question. It 
encouraged him to relieve himself. His listener 
knew Markham's name weU ; he had often heard of 
his little acts of kindness in the neighbourhood, and 
had more than once seen him and been struck with 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 209 

liis appearance. He knew that he had been living 
for some months at the Leonards' ; and when he 
heard of his strange appearance in the morning, of 
the note which he had sent, and of the way in 
which it was to he given, the father felt that there 
was some connection between the two things, and 
that a mystery of some painful kind was hidden 
under them. 

" Ah ! father," the man said, " there is something 
on his mind, I know there is, or his sweet face 
would never have had that awful look upon it. Per- 
haps he is mad, and the Devil has hold of him. If 
you would but come." 

" It is no place for me," was the answer. " He 
is a heretic and an Englishman. I could do no- 
thing." 

" Oh, but, father," the peasant said, "" it is not an 
outcast that he can be, so good and so young ; and 
last winter, when the hunger came and the fever, 
and I was hke to die with them, and I prayed to the 
Virgin to help me, she sent this English signor to 
me, and he gave me food and money, and he drove 
the illness away ; and it cannot be that she would 
employ in that way a lost heretic." 

The priest thought a httle while ; suddenly some ■ 
thing seemed to strike him. " To-day," he said, 
"yes, it was to-day, he was to come." He took a 
letter out of his pocket, and read it rapidly over. 
"He will pass tlu'ough Como on the 10th on Ms 

way to Eome; we have directed him to St. , 

where you will not fail to see him." It may be so ; 



210 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

yes, lie may be here now, and so something might 
be done. He continued to mutter indistinctly to 
himself, and, telhng his companion to follow him, 
walked rapidly to the monastery at the upper end 
of the town. 



Late in the afternoon Markham awoke ; he in- 
quired whether the man was come back from Oomo, 
and, on learning that he was not, he sat down again 
at the table, and, with his purpose steady before 
him, wrote Ms last good bye to such of us as cared 
to receive it. There was one letter to myself, in- 
closing another to his father, which I was to give 
him. Tliis last I might read if I pleased ; it was 
very short, but a generous, open-minded, affectionate 
entreaty to be forgiven all the pain which he had 
caused him. I, he told me, would receive his manu- 
scripts from Italy. If I thought, he said in his bitter 
way, that he was one of Bishop Butler's favourites, 
the end of whose existence was only to be an ex- 
ample to then fellow- creatures, I might! make what 
use I pleased both of them and of what I knew of 
his hfe. He had before written to me about Helen, 
and, giving me a rapid summary of what had passed, 
added that I should understand the conclusion. It 

was all over, he thought, as he was writing As 

I read over those last letters now, I could almost 
wish that his purpose had been fulfilled as he de- 
signed it ; but I will not anticipate. 

The most painful thing was yet to be done : he must 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 211 

write a few last words to Helen. They never readied 
their destination ; either from inadvertence or from 
nervousness, he forgot the direction, and this letter 
was sent with the other to me. The hand was steady 
at the beginning, as if he had nerved himself for a 
violent effort ; but his heart must have sunk as he 
went on. Many words were written through the 
blots of tears, and the end is scarcely legible. 

"' Helen," he wrote, " you have reason to hate 
me ; yet you will not when you read tliis, for, by 
that time, I shall have made my last expiation to 
Heaven and to you. Yesterday I thought of my- 
self, and I wished I had never seen you. Now I 
see my own littleness too plainly to care what might 
have been my fate. But, Helen ! would to God 
you had never seen me. We have been to blame. 
If you do not feel it, yet believe it, for me — for my 
sake ; it is all you can do for me now. Believe it, 
and forgive me. You forgive me ; I do not forgive 
myself till my life has paid for my unworthiness. 
Forgive me and forget me ; I never deserved your 
love ; I do not deserve your remembering. I never 
really loved you ; a heart like mine was too selfish 
to love anything but itself. I did but fall into a 
dream, and I tempted you into it waking ; the fault 
was all mine, let my sacrifice suffice. I will not 
tell you to be happy now — that cannot be after 
what you have lost. But it is not for nothing that 
God is visiting you : and if he has taken Annie 
from you, and taken me from you, it is for your 
sake, that He may win you for Himself. Turn, 



212 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

then, oh, turn ! there you will find peace, and pray 
for yourself and pray for me. And it may be — it 
may be — Helen ! pray that it may be, that in 
a little while — but a little — when your body will 
lie down in the dust by the side of ours, that our 
spirits may meet again, when I may be better worth 
your loving, and where love shall be no sin ; and the 
peace we have lost here shall be given us there for 
ever. 

" Farewell ! forgive me — farewell ! " 



Not far from the cottage, on the shores of the 
lake, was a spot where human hands had piled 
together a few old massive stones, and a stream of 
water, perhaps with some assistance, had scooped a 
basin in the granite. It was said that, many cen- 
turies before, a man had made a home there who 
was haunted by some strange sin; and the worn 
circle which was traced into the hard surface of the 
rock was still pointed out as the sign of the victory 
of penitence. It had been worn by the painful 
knees of a subdued and broken-hearted man. 
whose long watches the stars for thirty years had 
gazed upon, and whose prayers the angels had car- 
ried up to heaven ; and fast and penance, and the 
dew and the rain, and the damp winds, had cleansed 
the spots from off the tainted soul, and God's mercy, 
before he died, had hung round him the white gar- 
ments of a saint. It was a holy place; the pea- 
sants crossed themselves as they passed by, and 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 213 

Stopped, and knelt, and prayed the pardoned sinner's 
intercession for their sins ; and a small rude cru- 
cifix, carved, it was said, out of the very wood of 
Calvary, stood yet over the old stone which had heen 
the altar of the tiny chapel. What strange attrac- 
tion drew Sutherland's steps there, it would be hard 
to say ; whether it was that, in this forlorn and deso- 
late ruin, this poor wretched remnant of a worn-out 
creed seemed to find a sympathetic symbol of his 
own faith- deserted soul — or whether it was some 
more awful impulse, like that which haunts blood- 
guilty men, and, compelling them to their own self- 
betrayal, forces them to hang spell-bound round the 
scene of their crime, as if the forsaken faith could 
only fitly there revenge itself on the same spot which 
once had witnessed its victory — I know not — or per- 
haps the threads which move our slightest actions are 
woven of a thousand tissues ; and all these and innu- 
merable others drew him there together. He sat down 
upon the broken wall. The ripple of the lake was 
curling and crisping on the pebbles at his feet. The 
old famiHar scenes in the distance around him, so 
quiet and so beautiful — far away a white sail was 
glittering in the sunlight — happy human hearts were 
beating where that sail was, bounding along their 
Hght life way, with wings of hope and pleasure. 
Nearer still the island, the fatal island, and the trea- 
cherous water, and, last and worst, he could see the 
trees which hid the house where Helen was now 
lying — the lost, desolate Helen — alive or dead he 



214 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

knew not, he hardly cared, when life could he to 
her hut living death. The scene hung on upon 
his senses ; hut soon it was hut floating on their 
surface, and his mind turned in upon his memory, 
and year hy year, scene hy scene, his entire life rose 
up hefore him, and rolled mournfully hy. His love 
had heen but a passing delirium; she had never 
had all his soul ; and now what had the truest hold 
on his affections, — old home, and the old church 
hells, and his mother's dying blessing, came echoing 
sadly back again. And yet the storm was past. 
He was calm now, for he was determined. Tears 
were flowing fast down his face : but they were not 
tears of suffering, but soft tears, in which all his 
soul was melting at this last adieu to hfe, which, 
poisoned as it had been for him, he could not choose 
but love. He did not regret his purpose; he did 
not fear to die. Death must be some time, whatever 
death was. But it was the very death which was so 
near, which seemed to have taken off the curse from 
what he was leaving, as if the dawning hght of his 
expiation was already breaking over the darkness. 
He took the phial from his pocket, with a steady 
hand he untied the covering, and poured its con- 
tents into a little cup ; he put it down upon the 
stone. So clear, so innocent, it sparkled there. 
" Now for the last, then," he said. Once more he 
turned his eyes to the blue heaven, and round over 
the landscape, so beautiful, so treacherously beauti- 
ful. A thin white cloud was saihng slowly up to- 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 215 

wards the sun. We often fix our resolution hy the 
aid of other actions besides our own. The cloud 
should give the signal for his going. It would but 
veil the sunlight for a moment ; but in that moment 
a shadow would fall down on his spirit, which would 
pass away no more. 

" All is over now then," he said, " and to this fair 
earth, and sky, and lake, and woods, and smiling 
fields, and all the milHon things which gambol out 
their life in them, now good bye, and for ever. You 
will live on ; and the wind will blow, and men will 
laugh and sigh, and the years roll along, with their 
great freights of joy and sorrow; but I shall hear 
their voices no more. One pang, and I shall be 
lying there, among those old stones, as one of them. 
Little happiness, at best, there is, with all this fair 
seeming. A little — but a little — but I shall not be 
here to make that httle less. A few friends may be 
sorry for me when they hear of this last end ; but 
their pain will be brief as mine, and the wound will 
heal, and time will bear away its memory ; and for me 
no mortal heart will suffer more. Farewell, Helen ! 
last witness that earth had no deeper curse than love 
of me. Your spirit is broken; but peace may 
breathe over its ruins when I am gone. Fare- 
well, farewell ! The shadow steals over the earth. 
I see it ; the dark cloud spot rolling down the hill 
so fast, so fast. Oh! may it be a true emblem 
— the one dull spot in the great infinity of light! 
These stones, this altar, they have echoed to sor- 
row deep, perhaps, as mine ; and faith in this poor 



216 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

atom, poor carved chip of rotting wood, cheated 
the sufferer into a lengthened agony of years. Mi- 
serable spell that clings around us! we can hut 
pass from dream to dream ; hut change one idol for 
another; and place the very Prophet who came to 
free us, on the pedestal from which he had thrown 
down the image. 

Another moment —he raised the poison. " And 
Jesus Christ died on this ? " he said, as his eyes hn- 
gered on the crucifix, " died for our sins .... so 
I die to lighten others' sorrows, and to end my 
own!" 

" Die without hope — the worst sinner's worst 
death — to hear your sin, and your sin's punishment, 
through eternity ! " 

Was it the rocks that spoke? It was a strange 
echo. Markham started. The cup sunk upon the 
altar stone. His pulse, which had not shaken he- 
fore, hounded violently in his heart, as he turned 
and looked round him. And the figure he saw, and 
the glance he met, was hardly calculated to give 
him hack his courage. How well he knew it! How 
often in old college years he had hung upon those 
hps ; that voice so keen, so preternaturally sweet, 
whose very whisper used to thrill through crowded 
churches, when every breath was held to hear ; that 
calm grey eye ; those features, so stern, and yet so 
gentle! — was it the spirit of Frederick Momington 
which had been sent there, out of the other world, 
to warn him ? Was it a dream, a spectre ? What 
was it? Oh! false, how false, that a man who is 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 217 

bold to die, is bold for every fear! Markliam's 
knees shook ; his hair rose upon his head, and his 
tongue hung palsied in his throat, as he struggled 
to speak. 

" God sent me here to seek one who might be 
saved. He did not tell me I should find Markham 
Sutherland!" 

" What are you ? " stammered Markham. "How 
came you here ? " 

" I have come in time," he answered, cutting 
every syllable in the air with Ms clear impassive 
voice, as if he was chiselling it in marble. 

Markham's confused sense began to remember. 
Mr. Momington had been for two years in Italy, 
washing ofi", in a purer air, the taint of the inherit- 
ance of heresy. 

" Come with me," he said, with the manner 
which knows it is obeyed ; "' you must not stay 
here;" he crossed himself; "the place is holy!" 
He took the poison- cup from the stone, and threw 
it far away, and, with water from the fountain, he 
sprinkled the place where it had lain, and where 
Markham had been sitting. 

The young man watched him mechanically. This 
last action did not escape him; he was infected, 
and what he touched he tainted. He made no 
effort to resist. He who had but a few moments 
before philosophised over superstition, was feeble as 
a child. Again he saw in this the finger of Heaven, 
which he could not choose but obey. 

Mr. Mornington moved out of the consecrated 

L 



218 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

ground, signing to him to follow ; and lie went with- 
out hesitating. Partly it was the reviving of the 
power with which, in earher years, this singular per- 
son had fascinated him ; partly it was his guilt- 
suhdued conscience, which felt that it had forfeited 
the right to its own self-control. When they were 
outside the circle that marked the holy ground, his 
companion turned to him with features which had 
lost half their sternness, and had softened into an 
expression of tenderness and feeling. 

" And is it indeed you, Markham, you, I find 
here in this dreadful way ? . . . . I spoke sternly to 
you, I could not speak otherwise there. But, Mark- 
ham, I do not forget : I can be your friend as a man, 
if I cannot be more to you. Dear Markham, it was 
not a chance which sent me here ; I was told I 
should find an Enghshman, and an unhappy one. 
As an Enghsh priest my duty brought me here, and 
I come to find you, Markham, you on the very edge of 
a precipice so fearfal, that it is only now that I have 
led you from it, that you or I can feel its awfulness ; 
and I feel — yes, and you feel — it was not an accident 
which ruled it so. 

Markham's heart was bursting. '' Dear kind Mr. 
Mornington," he said, " you do not know what you 
have done. It would have been better if you had 
left me ; you may think so when you hear all that I 
will tell you." 

Momington s softeniag face grew softer; he knew 
the virtue of confession ; he knew that only a broken 
heart would turn to it unconstrained, and how soon the 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 219 

broken heart may become a contrite one. That day 
Markham told hun. all, first tliis long dark stoiy, the 
last load which lay the heaviest upon him ; then, as he 
began to rise from under the weight, he saw more 
clearly, or thought he saw, how fault had followed fault, 
and one link hung upon another ; and step by step he 
went back over his earher struggles, his scepticisms, 
his feeble pui-pose and vacillatmg creed, all of them 
outpouring now as sins confessed. His listener's 
sympathies were so entire, so heartfelt, he seemed 
himself to have passed through each one of Mark- 
ham's difficulties so surely he understood them. 
Nay, often the latter was startled to find himself an 
ticipated in his conclusions, and to hear them 
rounded off for him in language after which he him- 
self had been only feeling. At last it was aU over. 
The inexpressible relief he felt seemed to cry to him 
of reconciliation and forgiveness. Mr. Momington 
pressed but httle upon liim ; his heart was flowing, 
the wound had burst for itself, and had no need of 
urging. When it was finished, he said, "' Markham, 
I have heard you as a friend, I have only to ask you 
whether your conscience does not tell you that you 
have found a way at last where you thought that 
there was none, and whether you are prepared to 
follow it?" 

" Oh, yes, — yes," he said. 

" But to follow it now ? now while yom* heart is 
warm and the quick sense is on you of what you 
are and of what you were." Again Markham pas- 
sionately professed his readiness. 

L 2 



/ 



220 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

Then you Avill repeat to another what you have 
confided to me ; not as I have heard it, but under the 
sacred seal of confession; you will undertake the 
penance which shall he laid upon you ; and you will 
look forward with steady hope to a time when you 
may be received into the holy church, and may hear 
your absolution from her hps ? 

If Markham hesitated it was but for a moment. 
Mr. Momington went on .... " Your philosophy, 

,' as you called it, taught you to doubt whether sin was 
not a dream ; you feel it now ; it is no dream, it is 
a real, a horrible power ; and you see whither you 

i have been led in following bhndly a guide which is 

\ but a child of the spirit of evil. 
' How true it is that arguments have only power 
over us while the temper is disposed to listen to 
them ! Not one counterfact had been brought before 
him, not one intellectual difficulty solved, yet under 

I the warm rain of penitence the old doubts melted 

I like snow from off his soul. He felt his guilt, he felt 
that here that dreadful consciousness might be rolled 
away, and as idle he thought it would be to stand 

j hesitating with frozen hmbs with a fire within sight 
and within reach, till some cunning chymist had 
taught him why the fire was warm, as to wait now 
and hang aloof till the power which he felt was ex-^ 
plained to him. 

Whether all along below his weakness some latent 
superstition had not lain buried, which now for the 
first time broke out into activity, or whether he 
mistook the natm'al effect of having unloaded his 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 221 

acliing conscience in a kind listener's ear, for a super- 
natural spiritual strength which was flowing down 
upon him from heaven, or whether it was indeed true 
that his reason had gone astray ; that reason is by 
some strange cause perverted, and of itself and un- 
assisted it can but present a refracted image of the 
things of the spirit with every line inclining at a 
false angle ; and that the strange inexpHcable sense 
which contradicts reason (for we cannot flinch from 
the alternative) is the one faithful ghmpse and the 
only one of the truth of God, enough for our 
guidance and enough to warn us against philosophy 
— were questions which long after, in liis solitary cell, 
the unhappy Markham was again and again con- 
demned to ask himself, and to hear no answer, ex- 
cept in the wild rolHng storm of eager angry voices 
calling this way and that way and each crying down 
the other. . . . But there was no such hesitating now. 
The overpowering acuteness of his feeling unnerved 
what Httle intellect was left unshaken, and the gentle- 
ness and fascination of Mr. Mornington held him like 
a magnetic stream. He did all they bid him do ; for a 
time he felt all they promised that he should feel. 
He felt that it was his doubt wliich had unhinged 
him ; he had fallen because his moral eye had become 
dim. Deep as his sin had been, Mr. Mornington 
told him it was not mortal, because it had been un- 
completed ; saints had fallen, the man after God's 
OAvn heart had fulfilled as deep or a deeper crime. If 
he could submit himself utterly and unreservedly to 

L 3 



222 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

the holy church, the church in God's stead would 
accept him and would pronounce his full forgiveness. 

He confessed, and after undergoing the prescribed 
penance, he received the conditional baptism, was 
absolved, and retired into a monastery. Once and 
once only his human feeHng was strong enough to 
make him speak again to Mr. Mornington of Helen, 
and to ask what had become of her. But a cold 
severe answer that she was cared for, and a peremp- 
tory command never to let his thoughts turn upon 
her again (with a penance for every transgression) 
until those under whose care he had been placed 
could give him hopes that his prayers might be 
offered for her unsullied by any impurity - together 
with the severe rule of discipline under which he had 
by his own desire been laid — for a time at least 
drove her out of his mind. His crushed sense be- 
came paralysed in the artificial element into which 
he had thrown himself. His remorse overwhelmed 

his sympathy with her She belonged to the 

old hfe which he had flung off, and he endeavoured 
only to remember her in an agony of shame. 

Poor Helen ! she was cared for. How that night 
and those days passed with her was never known. 
Markham's note was brought her the morning of 
his disappearance, and she knew that he too was 
gone when all else was gone — gone ! — lost to her 
for ever ! It swept over her lacerated heart like the 
white squalls over the hot seas of India, with a fury 
too intense to raise the waves, but laying them all 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 223 

flat in boiling calm. It appears she collected energy- 
enough to write to Mr. Leonard, desiring him to 
come to her at once. She gave no reason — she did 
not even tell him that his child was dead ; only he 
must come to her, come on the instant. When he 
came he found her in a state of almost unconscious- 
ness. Her nerves were for the time killed by what 
she had gone through ; but when she saw him she 
was able to gather herself up. She knew him — she 
knew what she had to say to him ; and coldly, 
calmly, and gravely she told him all. There were 
no tears, no passionate penitence, no entreaties for 
forgiveness. Her words fell from her almost hke a 
voice from the shadowy dead sent up out of their 
graves on some unearthly mission ; and they awed 
him as such a voice would awe him. His rude and 
simple nature might have broken into passion had 
he seen one tinge of shame, or fear, or any feeling 
which he would have expected to find. He had 
never loved her, though he thought he had. Per- 
haps he was too shallow to love. But he might 
have felt real rage at his own injury, and he might 
have persuaded himself, in proper sort, that he felt 
all which an affectionate husband ought to feel; but 
this unnatural calmness overmastered him entirely. 
He was passive in her hands, to do or not to do 
whatever she might choose. What could she 
choose ? Home and kind home- faces there were 
none for her. Friends, except Markham, not one ; 
and him — whatever was become of him — she was 
never to see again. He had not even written again 



224 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

to her as lie had promised. Death had not come, 
though she had prayed for it. Madness had not 
come; she was too single-minded to think of 
suicide. 

To he alone with the past was all for which she 
wished. There was hut one gate hesides the grave 
which she knew was never closed against the broken- 
hearted — it was that of the convent. She knew httle 
and cared httle for difference of creeds. It was not 
the creed of the Cathohc which was the seed out of 
which those calm homes of sorrow have risen over the 
earth; hut deepest human feeling, deepest know- 
ledge of the cravings of the suffering heart. There 
at least was kindness, and tenderness, and compas- 
sion — there no world voice could break in to trouble 
her — there let her go. Her husband made no diffi- 
culty. In his heart he was not sorry, as it settled 
for him a question which might be embarrassing ; 
and the few arrangements which money could com- 
mand were soon made with a relation of one of his 

Italian friends, the Abbess of . The story 

was told her. Such stories were not new in Italy ; 
though it was new that of her own free will, a lady 
who had done what she had done, and had been 
bred in the free atmosphere of the world, should 
seek out so austere a home. And there went Helen 
— and there for two years she drooped, and then 
she died. All that woman's care or woman's affec^ 
tion could do to soften off her end was done. The 
exhaustion of her suffering left her soul in calm, 
and gave her back enough possession of herself to 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 225 

enable her to entangle into affection for lier the 
gentle hearts which were round her and watched 
over her. It was a deep, intense affection ; deeper, 
perhaps, because of the doubt and sorrow which 
were blended with it. For Helen lived and died 
unreconciled with the Church. She loved it — she 
loved its austerity, its charity, the wide soul- ab- 
sorbing spirit of devotion which penetrated and 
purified it, and the silvery loveliness of character 
which it had to bestow; and Helen might have 
joined it, might have received from its lips on tliis 
side the grave the pardon which may God grant 
she has yet found beyond it: only if she could 
have made one first indispensable confession that 
she had sinned in her love for Markham Suther- 
land — yet, with singular persistency, she declared 
to the last that her sin had been in her marriage, 
not in her love. Unlike his, her early training 
had been too vague. to weigh at all against the 
feeling which her love had given her ; she had little 
knowledge and an unpractised intellect — she had 
only her heart, which had refused to condemn her 
— she had never examined herself The windings, 
wheel within wheel, of the untrue spirit's self-de- 
ceptions, were all strange to her, for she had always 
been too natural to think about herself at all. Per- 
haps the heart does not deceive ; never does give a 
false answer except to those double-minded un- 
happy ones who do care about themselves, and so 
play tricks with it and tamper with it. At any 
rate, whether fi-om deadness of conscience, or from 



226 THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 

apathy, or indifference, or because of the unre- 
penting tenderness of her love, which never left her 
(although they took care to tell her of Markham's 
repentance) , she still clung to her feeling for him as 
the best and most sacred of her life. She acknow- 
ledged a sin which they told her was none, for she 
felt that she ought never to have promised Leonard 
what she had; but Markham she loved, she must 
still love. Her love for him could not injure him. 
If he was happy in forgetting — in abjuring her, 
she was best pleased with what would best heal his 
sorrow. 

Strange contrast — the ends of these two ! She 
died happy, forgiven by her husband and going back 
to join her lost child, where by and by they might 
all meet again, and where Markham need no longer 
fly from her ; for there, there is " no marrying nor 
giving in marriage." It was a hard trial to the 
weeping sisters who hung around her departure to 
see with what serene tranquilhty the unpardoned 
sinner, as they deemed her, could pass away to 
God. 

But Markham's new faith fabric had been reared 
upon the clouds of sudden violent feeling, and no 
air castle was ever of more unabiding growth ; 
doubt soon sapped it, and remorse, not for what he 
had done, but for what he had not done; and 
amidst the wasted ruins of his hfe, where the bare 
bleak soil was strewed with wrecked purposes and 
shattered creeds; with no hope to stay him, with 
no fear to raise the most dreary phantom beyond 



THE NEMESIS OF FAITH. 227 

the grave, he sunk down into the barren waste, and 
the dry sands rolled over him where he lay ; and no 
hving being was left behind him upon earth, who 
would not mourn over the day which brought hfe 
to Markham Sutherland. 



G. Woodfalland Son, Printers, Angel Court, Skinner Stieet, London. 



December, 1848, 

LIST OF NEW AND RECENT WORKS 



PUBLISHED BY 



JOHN CHAPMAN, 

142, STRAND. 



DR. CHANNING'S MEMOIR. 
Memoir of William Ellery Channiug^ B.D. 

With Extracts from his Correspondence and Manuscripts. Edited by 
his Nephew, William Henry Channing; and embellished by two 
very superior Portraits of Dr. Channing, engraved on steel, from paint- 
ings by the eminent artists Allston and Gambardella. 3 vols, post 8vo., 



cloth, £1 8*. 

"This is a valuable contribution to 
literature. The peculiar eminence 
reached by Dr. Channing during his 
life makes a history of himself and 
of his mind indispensable to the future 
student of opinion. A large propor- 
tion of readers of every sect will be 
more favourably impressed by the 

records here disclosed It must 

be emphatically recorded, that few 
lives appear to have been so complete, 
in the constant and consistent aspira- 
tion after completeness, as Dr. Chan- 
ning's. Many more columns might be 
profitably filled from this book, which 
will take its place upon the shelves of 
most worthy readers."— J<Ae»««M»z. 

" It is impossible to read the records 
of Channing's early internal struggles, 
by which his character was formed; 
and of the noble displays of that clia- 
racter in his efforts to promote high 
general education, unsectarian princi- 
ple and devotional feeling, pacific 
policy, and social reform ; above all, of 
the dignified, truly Christian, and in- 
dependent part he took in the anti- 
slavery movement,— without delight, 
instruction, and lasting impression for 

good We have only to add that 

much benefit may be derived from tlie 
study of Dr. Channing's biography— 
quite as much, to say the least, in this 
country as in America. It is a work of 
high merit, and of deep interest." — Ex- 
aminer. 

" A great secret of Channing's influ- 
ence was his catholic character. He 
had none of the narrow intolerance 
that distinguishes the more rigid sec- 
tarians ; he was not merely intellectual. 



[Now ready. 

like so many of the Unitarian denomin- 
ation to which he belonged. He had a 
heart as well as a head, and was more 
catholic than the Catholics themselves. 
This all sympathising, all embracing 
charity, was the result of instinct 
rather than of reasoning. He looked 
round upon creation and felt that ' it 

was good.' This genial sense of 

humanity and religion gave William 
Channing his wide sympathies and 
largeness or at least manysidedness of 
view. " — Spectator. 

" This Memoir will be read in all 
denominations ; and wherever it is read, 
must exert a most powerful and eleva- 
ting influence."— /wymrer. 

" The long-expected memoir of the 
venerated Channing will deservedly 
take rank with the best biographical 
works in tlie English language exposi- 
tory of Christian duty and practice, and 
will be found in the library by tlie side 
of the delightful memoirs of George 
Herbert, Jeremy Taylor, John Milton, 
and Arnold." — Christian Reformer. 

" It is pleasing to add, that objections 
to the theological tenets of Dr. Chan- 
ning, do not prevent our entertaining a 
high admiration of his general writ- 
ings ; but this admiration rises to a far 
liigher feeling as we study liis biogra- 
phy ; for we see that, ' singularly lofty 
as is the spirit which his writings 
breathe, he was true to them in heart 
and life :' and we find the secret of his 
eloquence in the power which elevated 
ideas and enlarged conceptions of all 
that is just, pure, true, grand, beautiful, 
loving, and holy, had in the transform- 
ation of his being." — Charnbers' Journal. 



Works published hy 



The Artist's Married life 



Just Published. 

being that of Albert Durep. 



For devout Disciples of the Arts, Prudent Maidens, as well as for tlie 
Profit and Instruction of all Christendom, given to the light. Translated 
from the German of Leopold Schefer, by Mrs. J. R. Stodart. 1 vol. 
fcp. 8vo, ornamental binding, 6s. 



" It is the worthy aim of the novel- 
ist to show that even the trials of genius 
are part of its education— that its very- 
wounds are furrows for its harvest 

No one, indeed, would have a right to 
expect from the author of the ' Laien- 
brevier' (see Ath. No. 437) such a stern 
and forcible picture of old times and 
trials as a Meinhold can give— still less 
the wire-drawn sentimentalities of a 
Hahn-Hahn ; but pure thoughts— high 
morals — tender feelings — might be 

looked for The merits of this story 

consist in its fine purpose, and its 
thoughtful, and for the most part just, 
exposition of man's inner life. To those 
who, chiefly appreciating such qualities, 
can dispense with the stimulants of 
incident and passion, the book before us 
will not be unacceptable."— ^^AewteMwz. 



" The work reminds us of the happiest 

efforts of Tieck The design 

is to show how, in spite of every obsta- 
cle, genius will manifest itself to the 
world, and give shape and substance to 

its beautiful dreams and fancies 

It is a very pure and delightful compo- 
sition, is tastefully produced in an anti- 
que style, and retains in the translation 
aU the peculiarities (without which the 
book would lose half its merit) of Ger- 
man thought and 'idiiorQ.."— Britannia. 

" Simply then we assure our readers 
that we have been much pleased with 
this work. The narrative portion is well 
conceived, and completely illustrates 
the author's moral; while it is inter- 
spersed with many passages which are 
full of beauty and ^diihos."— Inquirer. 



Italy : past and present. 

Or, General Views of its History, Religion, Politics, Literature, 
and Art. By L. Mariotti. 2 vols, post 8vo. Cloth, £1 Is. 

Vol. I. The Past, — The Middle Ages — Dante — Petrarch — Boccaccio 
— Machiavelli — Michael Angelo — Ariosto — Tasso — Vittoria Colouna — 
Galileo — Napoleon. 

Vol. II. The Present. — Mazzini and the partisans of active resistance. 
— Poscolo and the fate of the Italian Exiles. — Manzoni and the partisans 
of Catholic reaction. — Grossi and Italian Romance. — Pellico ; Italian 
Drama; the Prisoners of Spielburg. — Niccolini; Italian Drama; 
Lyrical Poetiy ; Leopardi ; Berchet ; Giusti. — Italian Artists ; — Litta ; 
Historical Publications ; Italian Aristocracy. — Mayer ; National Edu- 
cation. — Countess Pepoli ; Italian Women ; Domestic Life in Italy. 
— Gioberti; State of Catholicism; the Pope; the Jesuits and the Monas- 
tic Orders. — D'Azeglio, the partisans of Moral Eorce. — Pins IX. ; the 
Italian Princes and the Patriots. 
*:,;* The first of these volumes is a reprint, revised and enlarged, of a 
work published under the same title in 1841, and now out of print. The 
second volume is altogether new, and refers solely to the present condition of 
the country, and will be sold separately if reqmred, price 10s. 6d. 



" This is a useful book, informed with 
lively feeling and sound judgment. It 
contains an exhibition of Italian views 
of matters, social and political, by an 
Italian who has learned to speak 
through English thoughts as well as 
English words. Particularly valuable 
are the sketches of recent Italian 
history; for the prominent cliaracters 
are delineated in a cordial and sympa- 
thetic spirit, yet free from enthusiastic 



ideas, and with unsparing discrimina- 
tion. ... . .The criticisms on " The Past" 

will richly repay perusal ; it is, how- 
ever, on " The Present" of Italy that 
the main interest of the book resides. 
This volume does not merely possess an 
interest similar to that of contemporary 
works ; it supplies a desideratum, and 
is well adapted to aid the English 
reader in forming a just estimate of the 
great events now in progress in Italy. 



John Chapman, 142, Strand. 



Not the least wonderful part of the 
book is the entire mastery the author 
has acquired of our language."— £jr- 
aminer, April. 

"This important work treats the 
literature and politics of Italy in a 
masterly manner, and will repay ten- 
fold the labour of perusal." — Douglas 
JerrolWs Weekly Paper. 



" This is an exceedingly seasonable, 
intelligent, and interesting work."— 
Daily Neim. 

" Our author has an earnest, nay en- 
thusiastic, love and admiration of his 
native country; with the ability and 
eloquence to render his subject very 
interesting and attractive." — Morning 
Advertiser. 



The foUowiii2; notices refer to the first volume of the work 



" The work is admirable, useful, in- 
structive. I am delighted to find an 
Italian coming forward with so much 
noble enthusiasm, to vindicate his 
country and obtain for it its proper 
interest in the eyes of Europe. The 

English is wonderful I never saw 

any approach to such a style in a 
foreigner before— as full of beauty in 
diction as in thought"— Sir E. Bulwer 
Lytton, Bart. 

"I recognise the rare characteristics 
of genius- a large conception of the 
topic, a picturesque diction founded on 
profound thought, and that passionate 
sensibility which becomes the subject — 
a subject beautiful as its climate, and 
inexhaustible as its soil."— ^. Disraeli, 
Esq., M.P. 

" A very rapid and summary resume 
of the fortunes of Italy from the fall of 
the Eoman Empire to the present 
moment.— A work of industry and 
laboui', written with a good purpose. — 
A bird's-eye view of the subject that 
vnW revive the recollections of the 
scholar, and seduce the tyro into a 
longer course of VQa.A\ug."—Athencewn. 

•'This work contains more inform- 
ation on the subject, and more refer- 
ences to the present position of Italy, 
than we have seen in any recent pro- 
duction." — Foreign Quarterly Review. 

" In reference to style, the work 



before us is altogether extraordinary, 
as that of a foreigner, and in the higher 
quality of thought we may commend 
the author for his acute, and often 
original, criticism, and his quick per- 
ception of the grand and beautiful in 
his native literature." — Prescott (in the 
North American Review.) 

" The work before us consists of a 
continuous parallel of the political and 
literary history of Italy from the earli- 
est period of the middle ages to the 
present time. The author not only 
penetrates the inner relations of those 
dual appearances of national life, but 
possesses the power of displaying them 
to tlie reader with great clearness and 
effect. We remember no other work in 
which the civil conditions and literary 
achievements of a people have been 
blended in such a series of living pic- 
tures, representing successive periods of 
history." — Algemeine Zeitung. 

"An earnest and eloquent work."— 
Examiner. 

"A work ranking distinctly in the 
class of belles lettres, and well deserv- 
ing of a library place in England."— 
Literary Gazette. 

" A work warmly admired by excel- 
lent judges." — Taifs Magazine. 

"An admirable work written with 
great power and beauty."— Pz-o/. Long- 
fellow. (Poets and Poetry of Europe.) 



Peter Joues^ or Onward Bound. 

An Autobiography. Post 8vo, cloth, 3s. 



" The idea of the biography is to 
depict a mind rising from a condition 
of ignorance, and, by means of me- 
chanics' institutions, and the reading of 
books in the English tongue, realising 
for itself the relations between philoso- 
phy, science, and religion, and the 



bearing of all on theological dogmata 
and the literatm-e of the Hebrews. 
The writer is manifestly competent to 
his task, and has accomplished it with 
uncommon ability and considerable 
taste." — Douglas Jerrold's Newsjyaper. 



The Principles of Nature,, her Divine Heyelations^ and a Voice 

TO MANKIND. By and through Andrew Jackson Davis, the 
" Poughkeepsie Seer," and "Clairvoyant." 2 vols, large 8vo. cloth, 
18s. 

-4-*^ The Work consists of 800 pages, including a history of its produc- 
tion, with a Biographical Sketch, and Portrait (engraved on Steel) of the 
Author. 



" Taken as a whole, the work is a 
profound and elaborate discussion of the 



Philosophy of the Universe, and for gran- 
deur of conception, soundness of prin- 



Works published hy 



ciple, clearness of illustration, order of 
arrangement and encyclopediacal range 
of subjects, I know of no work of any- 
single mind that will bear away from it 
the palm. To every theme the inditing 
mind approaches with a certain latent 
consciousness of mastery of all its 
principles, details, and technicalities; 
and yet without the least ostentatious 
displayof superior mental powers."^!)?'. 
Bush, Professor of Hebrew in New York. 

" In whatever view the work is 
regarded, it is a very remarkable pro- 
duction, and will assuredly attract 
extensive attention here, as it already 
has in America." — Morning Advertiser. 

"The book has excited so much 
interest in America, that though large, 
consisting of 800 pages, 900 copies were 
sold in one week." — Family Herald. 

" Viewed as one will, the book is one 
of the most remarkable literary curi- 



osities ever heard ot."— Massachusetts 
Quarterly Review. 

" The main idea is skilfully sustained 
and developed, and there is a great deal 
in the book that we admire, and have 
long admired in other connexions." — 
American Christian Examiner. 

'• A very wonderful book, exhibiting 
everywhere a gigantic grasp of thought. ■' 
— Critic, 

"Let our readers distinctly under- 
stand that we do not on any supposition 
regard this book as common place, or 
easily explained. Be it fraud, delusion, 
or mixture, — be it mesmerism, or newly 
invented communication from the 
spiritual world, or downright revelation, 
be it any one of these, or anything else, 
it is very curious. As soon as the right 
name is found for it, we will be the first 
to call, of that name, extraordinary,— 
very extraordinary."— -i^^Aewtewjw. 



EnileaYoui's after tlie Christian Life. (First Series.) 

By James Martineau. Second Edition. 12mo, 7*. M. cloth. 

Eudeayours after the Christian Life. (Second Series.) 

&d. cloth. 



By James Martineau. l2mo, 7*. 

" Heartily do we welcome a second 
volume of 'Endeavours after the 
Christian Life,' because when all that 
suits not our taste is omitted, we have 
still left more to instruct, interest, im- 
prove, and elevate, than in almost any 
other volume with which we are ac- 
quainted "W hatever may be its 

defects, we regard it as one of the most 
precious gifts to the religious world in 
modern times." — Inquirer. 

" Mr. Martineau is known, much 
beyond the limits of his own denomin- 
ation, as a man of great gifts and ac- 
complishments, and his publications 
have been all marked by subtle and 
vigorous thought, much beauty ol 
imagination, and certain charms of 
composition, which are sure to find 

admirers There is a delicacy and 

ethereality of ethical sentiment in 
these discourses which must commend 
them, and we may safely say that many 



of the orthodox in all departments 
might receive from them intellectual 
stimulus, moral polish, and in some 
moods religious edification," — Noncon- 
formist. 

" One of the most interesting, attrac- 
tive, and most valuable series of essays 
which the literature of Christianity has 
received from priest or layman for 
many a year. 

" Volumes that have in them both 
intellect and true eloquence, and which 
satisfy the understanding while they 
please the taste and improve the heart. 

" When we say that these Discourses 
are eminently practical, we mean tliat 
they are adapted, not only for man in 
the abstract— to teach the duties of 
Christianity everywhere — but also with 
reference to the circumstances of 
society— of the age and country in 
which our lot is cast."— Cv«foc. 



History of the llehrew Monarchy, from the Administration of 

Samuel to the Babylonisli Captivity. 8vo, clotli, 10s, 6d. 

Prospec- 



" It is truly refreshing to find Jewish 
history treated, as in the volume before 
us, according to the rules of sound 

criticism, and good sense The 

publication of such a work will form 
an epoch in biblical literature in this 
country." — Inquirer. 

"The Author has brought a very 
acute mind, familar with knowledge 
that is beyond the range of ordinary 
scholarship, to the task of combining 
and interpreting the antique and frag- 
mentary records whicli coutain the 



only materials for his work. 
tive Review. 

"This book must be regarded, we 
think, asthe most valuable contribution 
ever made in the English Language to 
our means of understanding that por- 
tion of Hebrew History to which it 

relates The Author has not the 

common superstitious reverence for the 
Bible, but he shows everywhere a large, 
humane, and Christian spirit." — Mas- 
sachussetts Quarterly Review. 



Jolm Chapman, 142, Strand. 



Poems. By Ralph ITaldo Emerson. 



Post 8vo. 6s. cloth gilt. 
" There are in these stanzas many 
a fine image and sometimes a cluster 
of such — scattered symbols of deep sig- 
nificance—and tlie presence of sincere 

and earnest thinking every wliere 

A wild low music accompanies these 
ai'tless strains ; an indistinct, uncertain 
melody— such a tune as an untaught 
musical nature might choose to itself in 
solitary places There are some- 
times stanzas which are suggestive, not 
only in a political relation, but in one 
far higher— as touching those social re- 
forms wliich now everywhere command 
the attention of society. Some portions 
of a series of poems entitled 'Wood 
Notes,' are in their pecuhar way yet 
finer ; and the entire succession has 
been entlausiastically received on the 
other side of the A.t\siVLi\c.'"—AthencBU7n. 



I " There are in this volume unmistake- 
able evidences of genius; the soul of 
the poet flashes out continually ; and the 
hand of the poet is seen often." — Critic. 

" He occasionally reminds us of the 
reflective depth of Wordsworth ; and 
sometimes evinces a delicate fancy and 
richness of epithetworthyof Tennyson." 
— Manchester Examiner. 

" His lines are full of meaning."— 
Inquirer. 

" To read his finer pieces is to our 
poetic feeling like receiving a succes- 
sion of electric shocks ; even his un- 

shaped fragments are not bits of glass 
but of diamond, and have always the 
true poetic lustre. We know of no 
compositions that surpass his in their 
characteristic excellence." — Christian 
Examiner. 



Political Economy^ and the Philosophy of OoTernment. 

A Series of Essays selected from the works of M. de SismonITi. With 
an Historical Notice of his Life and Writings by M. Mignet. Trans- 
lated from the French, and illustrated by Extracts from an unpublished 
Memoir, and from M. de Sismondi's private Journals and Letters, to 
which is added a List of his Works, and a preliminary Essay, by the 
Translator. 8vo. cloth, 12s. 



" In this country the views of Sismon- 
di, long derided, and long kept down, 
have lately achieved a signal triumpli, \ 
and are still advancing for the amelio- | 

ration of social ills. The essays , 

embody Sismondi's settled views on 
Political Economy, and on the true 
policy which should animate a Govern- 
ment After having studied more 

deeply than most men, the science of 1 
Government and tlie speculations of j 
Political Philosophy, he settled down 
into the conviction that the principles 
of Christianity were as applicable to 
the life of nations as to that of indivi- 
duals, and that the happiness of the 
people would be best promoted by ob- 
serving them Besides the essays 

the volume contains many curious illus- 
trations of the Life of Sismondi 

In an ingenious prehminary essay by 
the translator, the views of Sismondi 
are applied to our social condition at 
the present time. The volume is alto- 
gether admirably produced, and, we 
think, is entitled to the earnest consi- 
deration of all persons who take an 
interest in social politics." — Britannia. 

" Few recent writers on Political 
Economy have claims on our attention 
equal to those of Sismondi. In England 
he is best known as an historian, but he 
is no less entitled to high reputation as 
a sound and thoughtful expounder of 
the social sciences We cordially re- 
commend this volume, as forming a 
most pleasant introduction to the study 



of the sciences of which it treats. It is 
both valuable in itself and peculiarly 
well timed." — Atlas. 

" The work is admirably translated. 
It has all the vigour of original com- 
position. The preliminary notice by 
the translator is replete 'vvith enlight- 
ened ideas. We heartily commend the 
volume to all who feel an interest in the 
great social and political problems 
which must soon be solved and adjust- 
ed, lest England is reduced to the state 
of Ireland." — Douglas Jer raid's News. 

"A writer of first-rate merit in 
history and politics, and one whose 
sympathy with the poor and discern- 
ment of the true good of men and of 
nations must give weight to all his 
moral convictions, concerning the right 
and wrong of our results." — Prospective 
Review. 

" We should like that these essays 
should have a wide circulation, and 
that the tone of pm-e benevolence 
which pervades them should thrill the 
hearts of cold-blooded economists with 
tenderer feelings of commiseration 
than usually mingle with their frigid 
calculations. There can be no question 
as to the evils he so powerfully exposes 
being directly caused by the reckless 
I application of the principles he would 
I entirely discard. 

" They will amply repay a careful 
I reading, as each is a masterly discussion 
I of tlie most prominent questions rela- 
' ting to our social condition."— JVomcom. 



Works published ly 



Honour \ or, the Story of the hraye Caspar and the fair Annerl. 

By Clemens Brentano. Witli an Introduction aad a Biographical 
Notice of the Author, by T. W. Appell, Translated from the German. 
Fcp. 8vo. gilt edges, 3s. 6d. 

land. The little tale before us is one of 
Brentano's latest works, and was pub- 
lished at Berlin in 1835. It is evidently 
his most finished production, and con- 
tains passages which will find an echo in 
all hearts. In thewords of his biographer, 
in this story Brentano's muse is dis- 
played in her fairest aspect, and entire- 
ly divested of his usual extravagant 
fancies. The delineation of the tale 
recals to one's memory the ingenious 
arabesque characters in the M.S.S. of 
the middle ages, and indeed many of 
the details are really taken from popu- 
lar tradition. But the whole is kept 
unaffectedly noble and simply true. 
We must not make extracts from this 
little volume, but can honestly say that 
it is admirably adapted for a Christmas 
Present or New Year's gift."— Westmin- 
ster and Foreign Owtrterly Review. 



" Brentano's story of ' The brave 
Caspar and the fair Annerl,' is one 
which has notably taken its stand 
among the romances that give a por- 
traiture of lower life in Germany, and 
like most of the works of its accom- 
plished author, ranks high in public 
estimation there. We do not think it 
likely to lose any of its popularity by 
its English dress. It is a melancholy 
and very touching story. Those who 
are unacquainted with the writiugs of 
Brentano will find a good account of 
them, together with a short biography 
of the author, in the introduction." — 
Examiner. 

" A little story worthy to take rank 
with Auerbach's Village Tales and 
other delineations of the peasant life 
of Germany, which have lately been 
received with so much favour in Eng- 



Shakspeare's Dramatic Art, and his relation to Calderon and 

Translated from the German of Dr. Hermann Ulrici. 8vo. 12s. 



Goethe, 
cloth. 



Outline of Contents. 



I. Sketch of the History of the Eng- 
lish Drama before Shakspeare. 
— R. Greene and Marlowe. 
II. Shakspeare's Life and Times. 
III. Shakspeare's Dramatic Style, and 
Poetic Yiew of the World and 
Things. 

"We strongly recommend the book 
to the notice of every lover of Shaks- 
peare, for we may truly say that it is 
well calculated to fill up a void in our 
own as well as in German literature."— 
Westminister Review. 

" The author has the ' Philosophic 
depth,' which we vainly look for in 
Schlegel's criticism of the great poet." 
—The Dial. 

" We welcome it as an addition to our 
books on the national dramatist— ex- 
haustive, comprehensive, and philo- 
sophical after a scholastic fashion, and 
throAving new lights upon many things 
in Shakspeare."— Sjoectetor. 

" The work of Ulrici in the original, 
has held, ever since its publication, an 
honoured place upon our shelves. We 
consider it as being, when taken all in 
all, one of the most valuable contribu- 
tions ever made to the criticism of 
Shakspeare. The theoretical system 
upon which it rests, if not altogether 
accurate or completely exhaustive, is, 
at all events, wide and searching ; its 
manner of expression is almost every- 
where clear and practical, and its 
critical expositions are given with 



IV. Criticism of Shakspeare's Plays. 
V. Dramas ascribed to Shakspeare of 

doubtful Authority. 
VI. Calderon and Goethe in their rela- 
tion to Shakspeare. 



equal delicacy of feeling and liveliness 

of fanc^ Here there are treated, 

successively, Shakspeare's language, 
his mode of representing characters, 

and his dramatic invention 

Our author has not only spoken 

with excellent good sense, but has 
placed one or two important points of 
Shakspeare's poetical character in a 
clearer light tlian that in which we are 
accustomed to regard them. Shakspeare 
is shown to be the historically-dramatic I 
poet of enlightened Christianity ; and j 
the highest value of his works consists j 
in their adequately representing, in the 
light of imagination, the Christian 
prospect of man's mysterious destiny." 
— Taifs Magazine. 

" A good translation of Dr. Ulrici's 
work on Shakspeare cannot fail of being 
welcome to the English thinker. It is, 
in fact, a vindication of our great poet 
from a charge which has lately been 
brought against him by critics on both 
sides of the Atlantic. Dr. Ulrici boldly 
claims for him the rank of an emi- 
nently Christian author The pre- 
sent work is the least German of all 
German books, and contains remark- 



John Chapman, 142, Strand. 



able novelty in its views of the subject 
and the arrangement of its topics. The 
plan adopted by Dr. Ulrici of contem- 
plating each play in the light of a 
central idea is especially deserving of 
all praise — We recommend the entire 
criticism to the perusal of the judicious 
reader."— ^^Aen^MW. 

" Excellencies of a high order per- 
vade this performance, which, in our 
judgment, entitle it to the grateful re- 
ception of all who are desirous of be- 
coming better acquainted with the 

mind of Shakspeare The sketch 

of the modern dramatic art with which 
the book opens, as well as of the life of 
Shakspeare, is well drawn ; indeed, the 
liistorical sketches throughout are ad- 
mirably executed The author's 

views are ingenious, and the criticisms 
on the several dramas are admirable, 
and will fully repay the reader's study." 
■ — Nonco nfo rniist. 

The Life of Jesus^ Critically Examined. 



" We welcome this work as a valu- 
able accession to Shaksperian litera- 
ture. It is the principal object of Dr. 
Ulrici's criticisms of the several plays, 
to trace and bring to light the funda- 
mental and ^^vifying idea of each. In 
this difficult task we think he has 
been eminently successful We can- 
not dismiss this very valuable work, 
which breathes a tone of pure and ex- 
alted morality, derived from a mind 
truly religious, and whose holy and 
chastening influence expresses itself 
throughout, -without remarking how 
much we admire the excellent manner 
in which it is translated."— /wywrrer. 

"Ulrici's admirable ' Shakspeare's 
Dramatic Art' has been lately trans- 
lated with considerable skill. We re- 
commend the work as an addition to 
our higher critical literature, and we 
should like to recur to it more fuUy."— 
Christian Re7nembrancer. 



By Dr. Davib Feiedrich Strauss. 3 vols. 8vo. £1 16s. cloth. 



"The extraordinary merit of this 
book — Strauss's dialectic dexterity, 
his forensic coolness, the even polish of 
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complished pleader, too completely 
master of his work to feel the tempta- 
tion to unfair advantage or unseemly 
temper — We can testify that the 
translator has achieved a very tough 
work with remarkable spirit and fideli- 
ty. The author, though indeed a good 
vsriter, could hardly have spoken better 
had his country and language been 
English. The work has evidently fal- 
len into the hands of one who has not 
only eifective command of both lan- 
^ages, but a familiarity with the suD- 
ject-matter of theological criticism, and 
an initiation into its technical phraseo- 
logy." — Westminster and Fo7-eign Quar- 
terly Review, 1847. 

" Whoever reads these volumes with- 
out any reference to the German, must 
be pleased mth the easy, perspicuous, 
idiomatic, and harmonious force of the 
English style. But he wll be still 
more satisfied when, on turning to the 
original, he finds that the rendering 
is word for word, thought for thought, 
and sentence for sentence. In pre- 
paring so beautiful a rendering as the 
present, the difiiculties can have been 
neither few nor small in the way 
of preserving, in various parts of the 
work, the exactness of the translation, 
combined Avith that uniform harmony 
and clearness of style, which impart 
to the volumes before us the air 

Translations from the German of Jean Paul^ Novalis^ Goethe, 

TJhland, Ruckert, and from the French of Mickiewicz, an eminent 
Polish poet. By Henry Reeve, Esq., and John Edward Taylor. 12rno. 
Elegantly bound in cloth, 2s. 6d. 



and spirit of an original. A modest 
and kindly care for his I'eader's con- 
venience Jias induced the translator 
often to supply the rendering into Eng- 
lish of a Greek quotation, where there 
was no con-esponding rendering into 
German in the original. Indeed, 
Strauss may well say, as he does in the 
notice, which he writes for this English 
edition, that as far as he has examined 
it, the translation is, " et accm-ata et 
perspicua.' ''—Prospective Review. 

" In regard to learning, acuteness, and 
sagacious conjectures, the work resem- 
bles Kiebuhr's ' History of Rome.' The 
general manner of treating the subject 
and arranging the chapters, sections, 
and parts of the argument, indicates 
consummate dialectical skill ; while the 
style is clear, the expression direct, and 
the author's openness in referring to his 
sources of information, and stating his 
conclusions in all their simplicity, is 

candid and exemplary It not only 

surpasses all its predecessors of its kind 
in learning, acuteness, and thorough 
investigation, but it is marked by a 
serious and earnest spirit."— C/mrf/aw 
Examiner. 

" I found in M. Strauss a young man 
full of candour, gentleness, and modesty 
—one possessed of a soul that was al- 
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dened by the reputation he had gained. 
He scarcely seems to be the author of 
the work under consideration."— Qz«?ief, 
Revue des Mondes. 



h 



The Dramas of IpLigeiiia in Tauris, and Torqnato Tasso^ of 

Goethe; and the MAID OF ORLEANS, of Schiller. Translated, 
(omitting some passages,) with Introductory Remarks, by Anna Swanwick. 
8vo, cloth; 6s. 



" It is seldom that we meet with a 
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The 'Iphjgenia' of Goethe has been 
already well done by Mr. William Tay- 
lor, of Norwich ; but his version is not, 
by many degrees, so readable as the 
one before us." — Athenceum. 

" We have to congratulate the trans- 
lator on perfect success in a very diffi- 
cult task." — Dublin University Magazine. 

" The translator has gone to her 
beautiful task in the right spirit, ad- 
hering with fidelity to the words of the 
original, and evidently penetrating the 
mind of the poet. The translations 



are very beautiful ; and while they will 
serve to make the mere English reader 
acquainted with two of the most perfect 
works ever written, the Iphigenia and 
the Tasso, they will form useful assist- 
ants to those who are commencing the 
study of the German language."— i^o- 
reign Quarterly Review. 

" This English version presents these 
poems to us in a garb not unworthy of 
the conceptions of their authors."— 
Morning Chronicle. 

" The verse is smooth and harmo- 
nious, and no one acquainted with tlie 
original can fail to be struck with its 
great fidelity and SiCCWc^CY."— Christian 
Teacher. 



Channing's Works,, Complete. 

Edited by Joseph Barker. In 6 vols. 12mo. 6s. sewed. 

The Elements of Indiyidualism. 

By William Maccall. Post 8vo, 7^. ^d. cloth. 



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Even those who can find no sympathy 
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sure and improvement from the many 
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"The expansive philosophy, the pene- 
trative intellect, and the general 
humanity of the author, have rendered 



The Elements of Individualism a book of 
strong and general interest."— CWife'c. 
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by this book Here is a speaker and 

thinker whom we may securely feel to 
be a lover of truth, exhibiting in his 
work a form and temper of mind very 
rare and peculiar in our time." — Man- 
chester Examiner. 



A Retrospect of the Religious life of England 5 

Or, the Church, Puritanism, and Free Inquiry. By John James Tatler, 
B.A. PostSvo. lOs 6d. cloth. 



" The work is written in a chastely 
beautiful style, manifests extensive 
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of thought, and decidedly original in 
its character. It is marked also by 
the modesty which usually characterises 
true merit." — Inquirer. 

"Mr. Tayler is actuated by no sec- 
tarian bias, and we heartily thank him 
regards all partiesin turn from an equita- 
ble point of view, is tolerant towards in- 
tolerance, and admires zeal and excuses 
fanaticism, wherever he sees honesty. 
Nay, he openly asserts that the religion 
of mere reason is not the reUgion to 
produce a practical effect on a people ; 
and therefore regards his own class 
only as one element in a better possible 
church. The clear and comprehen- 
sive grasp with which he marshals his 
facts, is even less admirable than the 



for this addition to our religious litera- 
ture." — Westminster Review. 

'* It is not often our good fortune to 
meet with a book so well conceived, 
so well written, and so instructive as 
this. The various phases of the national 
mind, described with the clearness and 
force of Mr.Tayler,furnish an inexhaust- 
ible material for reflection. Mr. Tayler 
impartiality, nay, more than that, the 
general kindliness with which he re- 
flects upon t\vem.:' —Examiner. 

" The writer of this volume has 
all the calmness belonging to one who 
feels himself not mixed up with the 
struggle he describes. There is about 
it a tone of great moderation and can- 
dour : and we cannot but feel confident 
that we have here, at least, the product 
of a thoroughly honest mind." — Lowe's 
Edinburgh Magazine. 



John Chapman, 142, Strand. 



A Discourse of Matters pertaining to Religion. 

By Theodore Parker. Post 8vo. 7s. cloth. 



CONTENTS : 



Book 1. — Of Religion in General ; or, 

a Discourse of the Sentiment and its 

Manifestations. 
Book 2.— The Relation of the Religious 

Sentiment to God; or, a Discourse 

of Inspiration. 
Book 3.— The Relation of the Religious 

Sentiment to Jesus of Nazareth; or, 

a Discourse of Christianity. 

I " Parker writes like a Hebrew 
I prophet, enriched by the ripest culture 

i of the modern world He under- 

I stands by sympathy more than by 
j criticism ; and convinces by force of 
exposition, not by closeness of argu- 
ment. His loftiest theories come thun- 
dering down into life with a rapidity 
and directness of aim which, while they 
alarm the timid and amaze the insin- 
cere, afford proof that he is less eager 
to be a reformer of men's thinking, than 
a thinker for their reformation. Listen- 
ing to the American reformer, you 
stand before a man of high and devout 
genius, who disposes of the wealth of 
erudition in the service of religion. 
Whatever judgment the reader may 
pronounce on the philosophy of the 
volume, he will close it, we venture to 
affirm, with the consciousness that he 
leaves the presence of a truly great 
mind ; of one who is not only unop- 
pressed by his large store of learning, 
but seems absolutely to require a mas- 
sive weight of knowledge to resist and 
regulate the native force of his thought, 
and occupy the grasp of his imagina- 
tion." — Westminster and Foreign Quar- 
terly Review, 1847. 

" There is a mastery shown over 
every element of the Great Subject, 
and the slight treatment of it in parts 
no reader can help attributing to the 
plan of the work, rather than to the 
incapacity of the author. From the 
resources of a mind singularly exube- 
rant by nature and laboriously enriched 
by culture, a system of results is here 
thrown up, and spread out in luminous 
exposition." — Prospective Review. 
" Mr. Parker is no ephemeral teacher. 



Book 4.— The Relation of the Religious 
Sentiment to the Greatest of Books ; 
or, a Discourse of the Bible. 

Book 5.— The Relation of the Rehgious 
Sentiment to the Greatest of Human 
Institutions; or, a Discourse of the 
Church. 



I His aspirations for the future 

j are not less glowing than his estimate 

for the past. He revels in warm anti- 

I cipations of the orient splendours, of 

I which all past systems are but the pre- 

i cursors His language is neither 

narrow nor unattractive ; there is a 
! consistency and boldness about it which 
I will strike upon chords which, when 
they do vibrate, will make the ears 
more than tingle. We are living in 
an age which deals in broad and ex- 
haustive theories ; which requires a 
system that will account for everything, 
and assigns to every fact a place, 
and that no forced one, in the vast 
economy of things. Whatever defects 
Mr. Parker's view may have, it meets 
these requisites. It is large enough, 
and promising enough ; it is not afraid 
of history. It puts forth claims ; it is 
an articulately speaking voice. It deals 
neither in compromise nor abatement. 
It demands a hearing ; it speaks with 
authority. It has a complete and de- 
termined aspect. It is deficient neither 
in candour nor promises ; and what- 
ever comes forward in this way will 
certainly find hearers." — Christian Re- 
membrancer. 

" It is impossible for any one to read 
the writings of Theodore Parker with- 
out being strongly impressed by them. 
Tliey abound in passages of fervid elo- 
quence—eloquence as remarkable for 
the truth of feeling which directs it, as 
for the genius by which it is inspired. 
They are distinguished by philosophical 
thought and learned investigation, no 
less than by the sensibility to beauty 
and goodness which they manifest." — 
Christian Reformer. 



Tlie Life of licliael Serretus. 

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10 Works puhUshed hy 



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11 



The Life of the Re?. Joseph Blanco Wliitc. 

Written by Himself. With Portions of his Correspondence. 
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Edited by 



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racter ; so clearly and strongly is the 
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has left. 

" His spirit was a battle-field, upon 
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gular intensity, the powers of belief and 
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Luther ReyiTed. 



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Slietches of Married Life. 

By Mrs. Follen. Royal 8vo. Is. 4d. 



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12 Worlcs puhlished hy 



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Marty 



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The Truth Seeker in Literature, Philosophy, and Religion. 

Devoted to free and Catholic enquiry, and to the Transcendental and Spirit- 
ual Philosophy of the Age. New Series, Published Quarterly, Price 2s. 

Liverniore's Commentary on the Four Gospels. 

8vo. 4s. 6d. cloth. 

The Prospective Review. 

A Quarterly Journal of Theology and Literature. 

Respice, Aspice, Prospice.— iS«. Bernard. 

" The Prospective Review is devoted to a free Theology, and the moral 
aspects of Literature. Under the conviction that lingering influences from the 
doctrine of verbal inspiration are not only depriving the primitive records of the 
Gospel of their true interpretation, but even destroying faith in Christianity it- 
self, the Work is conducted in the confidence that only a living mind and heart, 
not in bondage to any letter, can receive the living spirit of Revelation ; and in the 
fervent belief that for all such there is a true Gospel of God, which no critical or 
historical speculation can discredit or destroy. It aims to interpret and represent 
Spiritual Christianity, in its character of the Universal Religion. Fully adopting 
the sentiment of Coleridge, that ' the exercise of the reasoning and reflective 



John Chapman, 142, Strand. 



13 



powers, increasing insight, and enlarging views, are requisite to keep alive the 
substantial faith of the heart.'— with a grateful appreciation of the labours of 
faithful predecessors of all Churches,— it esteems it the part of a true reverence 
not to rest in their conclusions, but to think and live in their spirit. By the name 
' Prospective Keview,' it is intended to lay no claim to Discovery, but simply 
to express the desire and the attitude of Progress ; to suggest continually the Duty 
of using Past and Present as a trust for the Future ; and openly to disown the 
idolatrous Conservatism, of whatever sect, which makes Christianity but a lifeless 
formula." — Extract from the Prospectus. 

No. XVI. was published on the 1st of November, 1848. Price 2s. 6d. 

"Works for Review to be sent to the Publisher or Editors; Advertisements in 
all cases to the Publisher. 

The Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels. 

By Andrews Norton, Professor of Sacred Literature, Harvard University, 

Massachusetts. 2 vols. 8vo. ^\ cloth. 
*i^* There are about fifty pages of new matter in the first volume, and this 
edition of the work embodies throughout various alterations and corrections 
made by the author at the present time. 

The Work consists of three Parts, as follows :— 

PART I. 

Proof that the Gospels remain Essentially the same as they were 

originally composed 

PART 11. 

Historical Evidence that the Gospels have been Ascribed to their 

True Authors. 

PART III. 

On the Evidences for the Genuineness of the Gospels afforded by 

the Early Heretics. 



The very copious Notes appended to each volume constitute about half the 
amount of the entire work, the principal subjects of which are as follows :— 

CONTENTS OF THE NOTES. 



Note I.— Further remarks on the 
present state of the Text of the Gos- 
pels. 

Note II.— Various readings of the 
copies of the gospels extant in the time 
of Origen, which are particularly 
noticed by him. 

Note III— Undisputedlnterpolations 
in Manuscripts of the Gospels. 

Note IV.— On the Origin of the Cor- 
respondences among the first three 
Gospels. 

Note V.— Justin Martyr's Quota- 
tions. 

Note VI.— On the Writings ascribed 
to Apostolical Fathers. 

Note VII.— On the Statue which is 
said by Justin Martyr, and others, to 
have been erected at Rome to Simon 
Magus. 



Note VIII.— On the Clementine 
Homilies. 

Note IX,— On the false Charges 
brought against the Heretics, parti- 
cularly by the later Fathers. 

Note X.— On the Jewish Dispensa- 
tion, Pentateuch, and the other books 
of the Old Testament. 

Note XI.- On the Distinction made 
by the Ancients between Things Intel- 
ligible and Things Sensible ; on the use 
of the Terms Spiritual and Material, as 
applied to their Speculations ; and on 
the nature of Matter. 

Note XII.— On Basilides and the 
Basihdians. 

Note XIII.— On the Gospel of Mar- 
cion. 

Note XIV.— On the use of words 
©EOZandDEUS. 



u 



Works published by 



NOTICES OF THE WORK. 



" Professor Norton has devoted a 
whole volume full of ingenious reason- 
ing and solid learning, to show that the 
Gnostic sects of the second century ad- 
mitted in general the same sacred books 
with the orthodox Christians. How- 
ever doubtful may be his complete suc- 
cess, he has made out a strong case, 
which, as far as it goes, is one of the 
most valuable confutations of the ex- 
ti'eme German y^u^i^ovrss, an excellent 
subsidiary contribution to the proof of 
the ' genuineness of the Scriptures.' * * * 
His work on the Genuineness of the 
Scriptures is of a high intellectual 
order." — Quarterly Review, March, 1846. 

" This (the 2nd and 3rd volumes) is a 
great work upon the philosophy of the 
early history of our faith, and upon the 
relations of that faith with the religious 
systems and the speculative opinions 
which then formed the behef or engaged 
the attention of the whole civilized 
world. The subject is one of vast com- 
pass and great importance; and for- 
tunately it has been examined with 
much thoroughness, caution, and inde- 
pendence. The conclusions arrived at 
are those of one who tliinks for himself, 
— not created by early prepossessions, 
nor restricted witliin the narrow limits 
of opinions peculiar to any school or 
sect. The originality and good sense of 
Mr. Norton's general remarks impress 
the reader quite as strongly as the accu- 
racy of his scholarship, and the wide 
range of learning Avith which the subject 
is illustrated. His mind is neither 
cumbered nor confused by the rich store 
of its acquisitions, but works with the 
greatest clearness and effect when en- 
gaged in the most discursive and far- 
reaching investigations. 

" A great portion of the work, indeed, 
belongs to ecclesiastical history ; but it 
does not deal with the men and the 
events of that history, it relates almost 
exclusively to thoughts and theories. 
It analyzes systems of philosophy; it 
examines creeds ; it traces the changes 
and the influences of opinions. Nearly 



the whole of the work, as the German 
would say, belongs to the history of 
'pure reason.' The originality of Mr. 
Norton's views is one of their most 
striking characteristics. He does not 
deem it necessary, as too many theo- 
logians have done, to defend the records 
of his faith by stratagem. The conse- 
quence is, that his work is one of the 
most unanswerable books that ever was 
written. It comes as near to demon- 
stration as the nature of moral reason- 
ing will admit. 

" As an almost unrivalled monument 
of patience and industry, of ripe scho- 
larship, thorough research, eminent 
ability, and conscientious devotion to 
the cause of truth, the work may well 
claim respectful consideration. The 
reasoning is eminently clear, simple, 
and direct ; and abounds with the re- 
sults of the most profound learning."— 
North American Review. 

" The first volume of this work was 
published so long ago as the year 1837. 
At the close of it the author announces 
his intention to pursue the argument, 
by inquiring into the evidence to be 
derived from the testimony of the 
different heretical Sects. It is to this 
part of the subject that the second and 
third volumes, now before us, are 
directed,— which are evidently the 
fruit of much labour, research, and 
extensive reading ; and contain a 
variety of very curious incidental mat- 
ter, highly interesting to the student of 
ecclesiastical history, and of the human 
mind. 

" There are many interesting and cu- 
rious discussions of an incidental nature. 
Among these we may particularly spe- 
cify the remarks on the character of the 
ancient philosophy in the third volume, 
and a very curious note in the appendix 
to the same volume, on the distinctions 
made by the ancients between things 
Intelligible and things Sensible, and on 
the nature of Matter. —Prospective Re- 
view. . 



JoJm Chapman, 142, Strand. 15 



CfK Catljolir Series.* 



The Publisher of " The Catholic Series" intends it to 
consist of Works of a liberal and comprehensive character, 
judiciously selected, embracing various departments of literatm-e. 

An attempt has been made by the Church of Rome to realize 
the idea of Catholicism — at least in form — and with but a 
partial success ; an attempt will now be made to restore 
the word Catholic to its primitive significance, in its appli- 
cation to this Series, and to realize the idea of Catholicism 
in SPIRIT. 

It cannot be hoped that each volume of the Series will be 
essentially Catholic, and not partial, in its natm-e, for 
nearly all men are partial ; — the many-sided and impartial, 
or truly Catholic man, has ever been the rare exception 
to his race. Catholicity may be expected in the Series, 
not in every volume composing it. 

An endeavom* will be made to present to the Public 
a class of books of an interesting and thoughtful nature, 
and the authors of those of the Series which may be of a 
philosophical character will probably possess little in com- 
mon, except a love of intellectual freedom and a faith in 
human progress; they will be united rather by sympathy of 
SPIRIT than by agreement in speculation. 

* For List of Works already puLlished in the series, see pages 17 to 24. 



16 JForhs puhlished by 



CHARACTERIZATION OF THE CATHOLIC SERIES 
BY THE PRESS. 



" Tlie various works composing tlie " Catholic Series," should be known to 
all lovers of literature, and may be recommended as calculated to instruct and 
elevate by the proposition of noble aims and the inculcation of noble truths, 
furnishing reflective and cultivated minds with more wholesome food than the 
nauseous trash which the popular tale-writers of the day set before their 
readers." — Morning Chronicle. 

"Too much encouragement cannot be given to enterprising publications 
like the present. They are directly in the teeth of popular prejudice and 
popular trash. They are addressed to the higher class of readers — those who 
think as well as read. They are works at which ordinary publishers shudder 
as ' unsaleable/ but which are really capable of finding a very large public." 
— Foreign Quarterly. 

" The works already published embrace a great variety of subjects, and 
display a great variety of talent. They are not exclusively nor even chiefly 
religious ; and they are from the pens of German, French, American, as well 
as English authors. Without reference to the opinion which they contain, we 
may safely say that they are generally such as all men of free and philoso- 
phical minds would do well to know and ponder." — Nonconformist. 

" This series deserves attention, both for what it has already given, and for 
what it promises." — Taifs Magazine. 

" A series not intended to represent or maintain a form of opinion, but to 
bring together some of the works which do honour to our common nature, 
by the genius they display, or by their ennobling tendency and lofty aspira- 
tions." — Inquirer. 

" It is highly creditable to Mr. Chapman to find his name in connexion 
with so much well-directed enterprise in the cause of German literature and 
philosophy. He is the first publisher who seems to have proposed to himself 
the worthy object of introducing the English reader to the philosophic mind 
of Germany, uninfluenced by the tradesman's distrust of the marketable nature 
of the article. It is a very praiseworthy ambition ; and we trust the pubKc 
win justify his confidence. Nothing could be more unworthy than the at- 
tempt to discourage, and indeed punish, such unselfish enterprise, by attaching 
a bad reputation for orthodoxy to every thing connected with German philo- 
sophy and theology. This is especially unworthy in the 'student,' or the 
' scholar,' to borrow Fichte's names, who should disdain to set themselves the 
task of exciting, by their friction, a popular prejudice and clamour on matters 
on which the populace are no competent judges, and have, indeed, no judgment 
of their own, — and who should feel, as men themselves devoted to thought, 
that what makes a good book is not that it should gain its reader's acquiescence, 
but that it should multiply his mental experience ; that it should acquaint him 
with the ideas which philosophers and scholars, reared by a training difi'erent 
from their own, have laboriously reached and devoutly entertain ; that, in a 
word, it should enlarge his materials and his sympathies as a man and a 
thinker." — Prospective 'Revieio. 

" A series of serious and manly publications." — Economist. 



Jolin Chapman, 142, Strand. 



17 



%^z ©alj^olic <Seric$, 



Memoir of Jobauu Gottlieb Fichte. 

By William Smith. Second edition, enlarged. Post 8vo, cloth, 4s. 6d 



" A Life of Fichte, full of 

nobleness and instruction, of grand 
purpose, tender feeling, and brave effort ; 
the compilation of which is exe- 
cuted with great judgment and fideli- 
ty." — Prospective Reniew. 

" The material trials that Fichte en- 
countered in the body are lost sight of 
in the spiritual contest which he main- 
tained with liis own mind. Tlie page 
that keeps the record of incidents is 
dignified throughout by the strong 
moral hght that falls everywhere upon 
it, like a glory, and sweetened by a 
living episode that flows through its 
dark and bright places like a stream of 
music." — AthencBv/rn. 

The Vocation of the Scholar. 



" We state Fichte's character as it is 
known and admitted by men of all 
parties among the Germans, when we 
say that so robust an intellect, a soul so 
calm, so lofty, massive, and immove- 
able, has not mingled in philosohpical 
discussion since the time of Luther. . . 

Fichte's opinions may be true 

or false ; but his character as a thinker 
can be slightly valued only by such as 
know it ill ; and as a man, approved by 
action and suffering, in his life and in 
his death, he ranks with a class of men 
who were common only in better ages 
than ours." — State of German Litera- 
ture, by Thomas Carlyle. 



By JoHANN Gottlieb Fichte. Translated from the German, by "William 
Smith. Post 8vo. cloth, 2s. ; paper cover, Is. 6d. 
The Vocation of the Scholar' — is ! Fichte's works presented to the public 



distinguished by the same high moral 
tone, and manly, vigorous expression 
which characterize all Fichte's works 
in the German, and is nothing lost in 
Mr. Smith's clear, unembarrassed, and 
thoroughly English translation. " — 
Douglas Jerrold's Newspaper. 

" We are glad to see this excellent 
translation of one of the best of 



in a very neat form No class needs 

an earnest and sincere spirit moi'e than 
the literary class ; and, therefore the 
•Vocation of the Scholar,' the 'Guide 
of the Human Race,' written in Fichte's 
most earnest, most commanding tem- 
per, will be welcomed in its English 
dress by public writers, and be benefi- 
cial to the cause of truth."— Econo7nist. 



On the Nature of the Scholar^ and its Manifestations. 

By JoHANN Gottlieb Fichte. Translated from the German by "Wil- 
liam Smith. Second Edition. Post 8vo. cloth, 3s. 6d. 
" "With great satisfaction we welcome 

this first Enghsh translation of an 

author who occupies the most exalted 

position as a profound and original 

thinker; as an irresistible orator in the 

cause of what he beheved to be truth ; 

as a thoroughly honest and heroic man. 

The appearance of any of bis 

works in our language is, we believe, a 

perfect novelty These orations 

are admirably fitted for their purpose ; 

so grand is the position taken by the 

lecturer, and so irresistible their elo- 
quence." — Examiner. 
" A pure and exalted morality and 

deep rehgious feeling breathes throug- 

The Vocation of Man. 

By Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Translated from the German, by "Wil- 
liam Smith. Post 8vo, cloth, 4s. 6d. 
" In the progress of my present work, | the emotions of the heart proceed only 
I have taken a deeper glance into re- I from perfect intellectual clearness ; — it 
hgion than ever I did before. In me | cannot be but that the clearness I have 



out the -wYxole."— Irish Monthly Mag- 
azine. 

•'This work must inevitably arrestthe 
attention of the scientific physician, by 
the grand spirituality of its doctrines, 

and the pure morality it teaches 

Shall we be presumptuous if we recom- 
mend these views to our professional 
j brethren? or if we say to the enligh- 
tened, the thoughtful, the serious. This 
—if you be true Scholars— is your 
Vocation? "We know not a higher mo- 
rality than this, or more noble principles 
than these : they are full of truth."— 
British and Foreign Medico- Chirwgical 
Review. 



18 



THE CATHOLIC SERIES — {continued.) 



now attained on this subject shall also 
take possession of my Iieart."— KcA^eV 
Correspondence. 

" ' The Vocation of Man' is, as 
Fichte truly says, intelligible to all 
readers who are really able to un- 
derstand a book at all ; and as the his- 
tory of the mind in its various phases of 
doubt, knowledge, and faith, it is of 
interest to all. Agree with Fichte, or 
disagree with him, you cannot help 
being carried along by his earnestness ; 
you cannot help being struck with his 
sublety and depth. Argmnent, in such 
a matter, we take to be wholly in- 
different. A book of this stamp is sure 
to teach you much, because it excites 
thought. If it rouses you to combat 
his conclusions, it has done a good 
work ; for in that very effort you are 

The Characteristics of the Present Age. 

Translated from the German, by William 



stirred to a consideration of points 
which have hitherto escaped your in- 
dolent acquiescence." — i^'ore/^w Quar- 
terly. 

" This is Fichte's most popular work, 
and is every way remarkable. Aware 
that the great public was fully 
competent to grapple with the 
most arduous problems of philoso- 
phy, when lucidly stated, however 
it might shrink from the jargon of 
the schools, Fichte undertook to 
present his opinions in a popular 
form.'' —Atlas. 

" It appears to us the boldest and 
most emphatic attempt that has yet 
been made to explain to man his rest 
less and unconquerable desh-e to win 
the True and tlie Eternal."— Sewfwe^. 



By JoHANN Gottlieb Fichte 
Smith. Post 8vo. cloth, 7s. 

"A noble and most notable acquisi- 
tion to the literature of England."— 
Douglas Jerrold's Weekly Paper. 

" We accept these lectures as a true 
and most admirable delineation of the 
present age ; and on this ground alone 
we should bestow on them our heartiest 
recommendation ; but it is because they 
teach us how we may rise above the age 
that we bestow on them our most 
emphatic praise. 



"He makes us think, and perhaps 
more sublimely than we have ever for- 
merly thought, but it is only in order 
that we may the more nobly act. 

" As a majestic and most stirring 
utterance from the lips of the greatest 
German prophet, we trust that the 
book will find a response in many an 
English soul, and potently help to re- 
generate English Society." — The Critic. 



The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. 

With a Memoir of the Author by William Smith. Volume First, con- 
taining—I. Memoir of Fichte— 2. The Vocation or the Scholar— 
3. The Nature of the Scholar— 4. The Vocation of I^Ian. Post 
Octavo, cloth boards, price 12s. 
Volume Second will contain— 1. The Characteristics of the Present Age.— 2. The 
Doctrine of Eeligion. 

The Way towards the Blessed Life j or^ The Doctrine of Religion. 

Translated by William Smith. {Preparing for Publication.) 

Characteristics of Men of Genius 5 

A Series of Biographical, Historical, and Critical Essays, selected by per- 
mission, chiefly from the North American Review, with Preface, by John 
Chapman. 2 vols, post 8vo. cloth, 12s. ; extra cloth, gilt edges, 14s. 

CONTENTS. 
Gregory VII., Loyola, Pascal. 
Dante, Petrarch, Shelley, Byron, Goethe, Wordsworth, 

Milton, Scott, The German Poets. 
Michael Angelo, Canova. 
Machiavelli, Louis IX., Peter the Great. 
" Essays of very high order, which literature of any coxmtiy.'^—Westmin- 
from their novelty, and their intrinsic ster Review. 
value, we are sure will receive Irom the j " Essays of great power and interest. 

British public a reception commen- I In freedom of opiuion, and occa- 

surate with their merits They are i sionally in catholicity ot judgment, the 

Essays which would do honour to the i writers are superior to our own period!- 



Johi 



,142, Strand. 



19 



THE CATHOLIC SERIES — Continued. 



cal essayists ; but we think there is less 
brilliancy and point in them; though 
on that very account there is, perhaps, 
gi'eater irapartiahty and justice."— 
Douglas Jerrold's Magazine. 

"Itich as we are in this delightful 
department of Literature, we gladly 
accept another contribution to critical 

biography The American writers 

keep more closely to their text than our 
own reviewers, and are less solicitous to 
construct a theory of their own, and 
thereby run the risk of discolouring the 
facts of history, than to take a calm 
and dispassionate survey of events and 
opinions." — Morning Chronicle. 

" Essays well worthy of an European 
Life." — Christian Reformer. 

" The collection before us is able and 
readable, with a good deal of interest 
in its subjects. They exhibit force, just- 
ness of remark, an acquaintance with 
their subject, beyond tlie mere book 
reviewed; much cleai'-headed pains- 
taking in the paper itself, where the 

The Worship of Genius j 

Being an Examination of the Doctrine annoimced by B. F. Strauss, viz. 
" That to our Age of Religious Disorganization nothing is left but a Worship 
of Genius ; that is, a Reverence for those great Spirits wlio create Epochs in 
the Progi'ess of the Human Race, and in whom, taken collectively, the God- 
like manifests itself to us most fully," and thus having reference to the views 
unfolded in the work entitled, " Heroes and Hero-worship," by Thomas Carlyle. 

AND 

The Distinctire Character or Essence of Christianity s 

An Essay relative to Modern Speculations and the present State of Opinion. 
Translated, from the German of Prof. C. Ullmann, by Lucy Sanford. 1 vol. 
post 8vo. 3s. 6d. 

CONTENTS. 



treatment requires pains, a larger and 
more liberal spirit than is often found 
in Transatlantic literature, and some- 
times a marked and forcible style."— 
Spectator. 

" A work that will be right welcome 
to all lovers of literature, and which 
! ought to be ordered by every book- 
club." — Critic. 

" There is hardly one of these papers 
that has not great n\QV\t.'"— Inquirer. 

" This is truly a delightful book. We 
heartily welcome it as worthy to take 
its stand by the side of the • Contri- 
butions' of our own great reviewers. 
Eacli essay, having for its object the 
development of the characteristics of 
one mind, is complete in itself, and 
almost perfect in the elegance and 
beauty of its execution." — Nonconform. 

" The value, both intrinsic and ex- 
trinsic, of these essays justly claims for 
them a favourable reception and atten- 
tive perusal in England." — Manchester 
Examiner. 



1. General view of the object of the 

work. 

2. Tlie different stages of development 

through which Christianity itself 
has passed. The same phases 
perceptible in tlie views which 
have been successively taken of it. 

3. Cliristianity as Doctrine. Under 

tliis head are comprised both 
Supernatm-alism and Natu- 
ralism. 

4. Christianity as a Moral Law. The 

philosophy of Kant. Eation- 
alism. 

5. Christianity as the Religion of Re- 

demption. Schleiermacher's de- 
finition. 



6. The peculiar significance and in- 

fluence of Christ's individual 
character. 

7. The views of Hegel and his school. 

8. Christ as the exemplification of the 

union of the Divine and Human 
in one character. 

9. Importance of this truth for the de- 

finition of the distinctive Charac- 
ter of Christianity. 

10. Christianity as the Perfect Religion. 

1 1 . Inferences from the preceding. 

12. Retrospect and epitome of the 

argument. 

13. Application of the preceding to the 

idea of Faith. 

14. Application to the Church. 



(* The above two works are comprised in one volume, post Svo. 3s. 6d. cloth. 



" There are many just and beautiful 
conceptions expressed and developed, 
and the mode of utterance and illustra- 
tion is more clear and simple than that 
adopted often by our German brethren 
in treating such topics.'^— Xonco)ifor7nist. 



" There is in it much important and 
original thought. Intelligent British 
Christians, who are inchned to take 
philosophical views of the Christian 
faith, will find much to delight and in- 
struct them." — Baptist Magazine. 



20 



Wo7'ks published hy 



THE CATHOLIC SERIES — (cOtltinued.) 

The life of Jean Paul Fr. Richter. 

Compiled from various sources. Together with his Autobiography, 
ted from the German. 2 vols, paper cover, 7s. ; cloth, 8s. 

" The autobiography of Richter, which 

extends only to his twelfth year, is one 

of the most interesting studies of a true 

poet's childhood ever given to the 

world." — Loive^s Edinburgh Magazine. 
" Richter has an intellect vehement, 

rugged, irresistible, crusliing in pieces 

the hardest problems ; piercing into the 

most hidden combinations of things, 

and grasping the most distant; an 

imagination vague, sombre, splendid, 

or appalling, brooding over the abysses 

of being, wandering through infinitude, 

and summoning before us, in its dim 

religious light, shapes of brilUancy, 

solemnity, or terror; a fancy of exu- 
berance literally unexampled, for it 

pours its treasures Avith a lavishness 

which knows no limit, hanging, like 

the sun, a jewel on every grass-blade, 

and sowing the earth at large with 

oi'ient pearls. But deeper than all 

these lies humour, the ruling quality 

of Richter — as it were the central iire 

that pervades and vivifies his whole 

being. He is a humorist from his in- 
most soul ; he thinks as a humorist ; he 

imagines, acts, feels as a humorist: 

sport is the element in which his 

nature lives and works." — Thomas 

Carlyjoe. 
" With such a writer it is no common 

treat to be intimately acquainted. In 

the proximity of great and virtuous 

minds -we imbibe a portion of their na- 
ture — feel, as mesmerists say, a health- 
ful contagion, are braced with the same 

spirit of faith, hope, and patient en- 
durance—are furnished with data for 

clearing up and working out the intri- 
cate problem of life, and are inspired, 

hke them, with the prospect of immor- 
tality. No reader of sensibility can rise 
from the perusal of these volumes with- 
out becoming botli wiser and better." — 
Atlas. 

"We find in the present biography 
much that does not so much amuse 
and instruct, as, to adopt a phrase from 
the religious world, positively edify tlie 
reader. The life of Richter is indeed 
a moral and a religious, as much as a 
literary treat, to all who have a sense 
exercised to discern rehgion and mora- 
lity as a thing essentially different from 
mere orthodoxy and asceticism. The 
two volumes before us cannot be se- 
riously read without stimulating the 
reader, like a good sermon, to self-ame- 
lioration, and in this respect they are 
invaluable. 

" Richter is a thorough Christian, and 
a Christian with a large glowing human 



Transla- 



heart. The appearance of his biography 
in an English form cannot, therefore, 
but be regarded as a great boon to the 
best interests of the country." — Taifs 
Magazine. 

" Apart from the interest of the work, 
as the life of Jean Paul, the reader 
learns something of German life and 
German thought, and is introduced to 
Weimar during its most distinguished 
period— when Goethe, Schiller, Herder, 
and Wieland, the great fixed stars of 
Germany, in conjunction with Jean 
Paul, were there, surrounded by beau- 
tiful and admiring women, of the most 
refined and exalted, natures, and of 
princely rank. It is full of passages so 
attractive and valuable that it is diffi- 
cult to make a selection as examples of 
its character." — Inquirer. 

" This book will be found very valu- 
able as an introduction to the study of 
one of tlie most eccentric and difficult 
writers of Germany. Jean Paul's writ- 
ings are so much the reflex of Jean Paul 
liimself, that every light that shines 
upon the one inevitably illumines tlie 
other. The work is a useful exhibition 
of a great and amiable man, who, pos- 
sessed of the kindliest feelings, and the 
most brilliant fantasy, turned to a high 
purpose that humour of which Rabelais 
is the great grandfather, and Sterne one 
of the Line of ancestors, and contrasted 
it with an exaltation of feeling and a 
rhapsodical poetry which are entirely 
his own. Let us hope that it will com- 
plete the work begun by Mr. Carlyle's 
Essays, and cause Jean Paul to be really 
read in this country." — Examiner. 

" Richter is exhibited in a most ami- 
able light in this biography— industri- 
ous, frugal, benevolent, with a child-like 
simplicity of character, and a heart 
overflowing with the purest love. His 
letters to his wife are beautiful memo- 
rials of true affection, and the way in 
which he perpetually speaks of his chil- 
dren shows that he was the most at- 
tached and indulgent of fathers. Who- 
ever came within the sphere of his com- 
panionship appears to have contracted 
an affection for him that death only 
dissolved : and while his name was re- 
sounding through Germany, he re- 
mained as meek and humble as if he 
had still been an unknown adventiirer 
on Parnassus."— TOe Apprentice. 

" The life of Jean Paul is a charming 
piece of biography which draws and 
rivets the attention. The affections of 
the reader are fixed on the hex'o with an 
intensity rarely bestowed on an his- 



John Chapman^ 142, Strand, 



21 



THE CATHOLIC SERIES {contillUed.) 



torical character. It is impossible to 
read this biography without a convic- 
tion of its integrity and truth; and 
tliougli Ritcher's style is more difficult 
of translation than that of any other 



German, yet we feel that his golden 
thoughts have reached us pure from the 
mine, to which he has given that impress 
of genius which makes them current in 
all countries." — Christian liefornier. 



The Mental History of an Inquiring Spirit. 



A Biography of Charles Elwood. By 0. A. Brownson. Fost 8vo. 4s. cloth ; 
3s. 6d. paper cover. 



" This work is an attempt to pre- 
sent Christianity so that it shall satisfy 
the philosophic element of our nature. 
In this consists its peculiar merit and 
its distinctive characteristic. Such a 
book was certainly very much needed. 
We have no doubt that it will add many 
a doubter to a cheerful faith, and con- 
firm many a feeble mind in the faith it 
has already professed. Mr. Brownson 
addresses the philosophic element, and 
the men in whom this element is pre- 
dominant ; and, of course, he presents 
the arguments that would be the most 
striking and satisfactory to this class of 
men. In so far as he ha*^ succeeded, he 
must be considered to have done a meri- 
torious work. We think Mr. Brownson 
eminently quahfied for this task, and 
that his success is complete. The work 
will, doubtless, be the means of giving 
composure and serenity to the faith of 
many who are as yet weak in the faith, 
or halting between two opinions." — 
Christian Exayniner. 

" In a series of chapters, Mr. Morton 
explains the nature of the Christian 
faith, and replies to the objections 
raised by Elwood as the discussion pro- 
ceeds, and the argument we take to be 
conclusive, though of course every one 
may differ as to details. The mighty 
theme is handled in a most masterly 
style, and the reasoning may fairly be 
called 'mathematical.' There is nei- 
ther rant nor cant, hypothesis or dog- 
matism. Christianity is proved to be 
a ' rational religious system,' and the 
priest is exhibited in his true character. 



The Mission of the German Catholics. 



We can cordially recommend the vo- 
lume, after a very careful perusal, to the 
layman who desires to think for him- 
self, and to the clergy, as eminently 
calculated to enlarge their views and 
increase their usefulness, by showing 
thein the difference between sectarian- 
ism and Christianity." — Sentinel. 

" The purposes, in this stage of his 
progress, which Mr. Brownson has in 
view are, the vindication of the reality of 
the religious principle in the nature of 
man ; the existence of an order of senti- 
ments higher than the calculations of 
the understanding and the deductions 
of logic ; the foundation of morals on 
the absolute idea of right in opposition 
to the popular doctrine of expediency ; 
the exposition of a spiritual philosophy ; 
and the connexion of Christianity with 
the progress of society. 

" The work presents the most profound 
ideas in a simple and attractive form. 
The discussion of these principles, 
which in their primitive abstraction are 
so repulsive to most minds, is carried 
on, through the medium of a slight fic- 
tion, with considerable dramatic effect. 
We becom.e interested in the final 
opinions of the subjects of the tale, as 
we do in the catastrophe of a romance. 
A slender thread of narrative is made 
to sustain the most weighty arguments 
on the philosophy of religion ; but the 
conduct both of the story and of the 
discussion is managed with so much 
skill, that they serve to relieve and for- 
ward each other."— Dia^. 



By Prof. G. G. Gervinus, Author 
National-Literatur der Deutschen." 

"This work well deserves an intro- 
duction to an English public. It con- 
tains the reflections of a German philo- 
sopher on the extraordinary religious 
movement which is now agitating his 
countrymen ; his anticipations, and his 
wishes respecting its results."— /n^ww-er. 

In an article upon the Author's 
" History of the Poetical Literature of I 
the Germans," the North American 



of the " Geschichte der Poetischen 
Post 8vo. Is. 4d. 

Review says :— " He exhibits the ex- 
tensive and profound erudition, the 
historical faculty of bringing past and 
remote states of society near, and pro- 
jecting the present into the distance; 
and the philosophical insight into the 
distinguishing features of individuals, 
communities, and epochs, which so 
favourably cliaracterize the recent his- 
toriography of the Germans." 



22 



Works published by 



THE CATHOLIC SERIES — {continued.) 

The Philosophical and Esthetic Letters and Essays of Schiller. 

Translated, with an Introduction, by J. "Weiss. Post 8vo. 7s. 6d. cloth. 



" These Letters stand unequalled in 
the department of Esthetics, and are so 
esteemed even in Germany, wliich is so 
fruitful upon that topic. Schiller is 
Germany's best ^sthetician, and these 
letters contain the highest moments of 
Schiller. Wliether we desire rigorous 
logical investigation or noble poetic ex- 
pression, whether we wish to stimulate 
the intellect or inflame the heart, we 
need seek no further than these. They 
are trophies won from an unpopular, 
metaphysical form, by a lofty, inspiring, 
and absorbing suhiect."— Introduction. 

" It is not possible, in a brief notice 
like the present, to do more than inti- 
mate the kind of excellence of a book 
of this nature. It is a profound and 
beautiful dissertation, and must be dili- 
gently studied to be comprehended. 
After all the innumerable etforts that the 
present age has been some time making 
to cut a Koyal road to everytliing, it is 
beginning to find that what sometimes 
seems the longest way round is the 
shortest way home ; and if there be a 
desire to have truth, the only way is to 
work at the windlass one's self, and 
bring up the buckets by the labour of 
one's own good arm. "Whoever works 
at the present w-ell, will find ample 
reward for the labour they may bestow 
on it ; the trutlis he will draw up are 
universal, and from that pure elemen- 
tary fountain 'that maketh wise he that 
driuketh thereat.'"— Dow^Za* JerroWs 
Magazine. 

" It is difficult, if not impossible, to 
give a brief, and at the same time faith- 
ful, summary of the ideas affirmed by 
Schiller in this volume. Its aim is to 
develop the ideal of humanity, and to 
define the successive steps which must 
be trodden to attain it. Its spirit 
aspires after himian improvment, and 
seeks to indicate the means of realiza- 
tion. Schiller insists upon the necessi- 
ty of aesthetic culture as preliminary to 
moral culture, and in order to make 
the latter possible. According to the 
doctrine here set forth, until man is 
aesthetically developed, he cannot be 

The Philosophy of Art. 



morally free, hence not responsible, as 
there is no sphere for the operation of 
the will. 

" The style in which the whole volume 
is written is particularly beautiful, there 
is a consciousness of music in every page 
we read ; it it remarkable for the con- 
densation of thought and firm consist- 
ency wliich prevails throughout; and. 
so far as we are able to judge, the 
translation is admirably and faithfully 
rendered. The twenty-seven letters 
upon the '-/Esthetic Culture of Man,' 
form the most prominent, and by far 
the most valuable, portion of the work ; 
they will be found full of interest and 
the choicest riches, which will abund- 
antly repay any amoimt of labour 
bestowed upon them." — Inquirer. 

" This is a book which demands and 
deserves study. Either to translate or 
to appreciate it requires a somewhat 
peculiar turn of mind. Not that any 
body could read it without profit, but to 
gain from it all that it is capable ol 
yielding, there must be some aptitude 
for such studies, and some training in 

them too To be appreciated 

it must be studied, and tlie study 
will be well repaid." — Christian Ex- 
aminer. 

" Here we must close, unwillingly, 
this volume, so abounding in food for 
thought, so fruitful of fine passages, 
lieartily commending it to all of our 
readers who desire to make acquaint- 
ance with the philosophy of art. The 
extracts we have taken will prove what 
a treasm-e is here, for they are but a 
fraction of the gems that are to be 
gathered in every page. We make no 
apology for having so long lingered over 
tliis book; for, albeit, philosophy is 
somewhat out of fashion in our age of 
materialism, it yet will find its votaries, 
fit though few ; and even they who care 
not for the higher regions of reflection, 
cannot fail to reap infinite pleasure 
from the eloquent and truthful passages 
we have sought to cull for their mingled 
delight and edification."— CWitc. 



An Oration on the Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature. Translated from 
the German of F. W. J. von Schex,i,ing, by A. Johnson. Post 8vo. Is. 
paper cover ; Is. 6d. cloth. 

inadequate manifestation of a high 
idea, which it is the office of man to 
penetrate. The true astronomer is not 
he who notes down laws and causes 
which were never revealed to sensuous 
organs, and which are often opposed to 



" TMs excellent oration is an appli- 
cation to art of SchelUng's general 
pliilosophic principles. Schelling takes 
the bold course, and declares that what 
is ordinarily called nature is not the 
summit of iserfection, but is only the 



John Chapman, 142, Strand. 



23 



THE CATHOLIC SERIES — {continued.) 



the prima facie influences of sensuous 
observers. The true artist is not he who 
merely imitates an isolated object in 
nature, but he who can penetrate into 
tlie unseen essence that lurks behind 
the visible crust, and aftenvards re- 
produce it in a visible form. In the 
surrounding world means and ends are 
clashed and jarred together ; in the 
work of art the heterogeneous is ex- 
cluded, and an unity is attained not to 
be found elsewhere. Schelling, in his 
oration, chiefly, not exclusively, regards 
the arts of painting and sculpture ; but 

Essays. By R. W. Emerson. 



his remarks will equally apply to 
others, such as poetry and music. This 
oration of Schelling's deserves an exten- 
sive perusal. The translation, witli the 
exception of a few trifling inaccurrcies, 
is admirably done by Mr. Johnson ; 
and we know of no work in our language 
better suited to give a notion of the turn 
which German pliilosophy took after it 
abandoned the subjectivity of Kant and 
Fichte. The notion will, of course, be 
a faint one; but it is something to know 
the latitude and longitude of a mental 
position." — Examiner. 



(Second Series.) With a Notice by Thomas Cahlyle. 
3s. 6d. cloth. 



paper cover 



"Among the distinguishing features 
of Christianity— we are ready to say the 
distinguishing feature— is its humanity, 
its deep sympathy witli human kind, 
and its strong advocacy of human wants 
and rights. In this particular, few 
have a better title to be ranked among 
the followers of Jesus than the author 
of this book." — American Christian Ex- 
aminer. 

" The difficulty we find in giving a 
proper notice of this volume, arises 
from the pervadingness of its excellence, 
and the compression of its matter. 
With more learning than Hazlitt, more 
perspicuity than Carlyle, more vigour 
and depth of thought than Addison, and 
with as much originality and fascination 
as any of them, this volume is a bril- 
liant addition to the Table Talk of in- 
tellectual men, be they who or where 
they may." — Prospective Review. 

" Mr. Emerson is not a common man, 
and everything he writes contains sug- 
gestive matter of much thought and 
earnestness."— Examiner. 

" That Emerson is, in a high degree, 
possessed of the faculty and vision of 
the seer, none can doubt who will ear- 
nestly and with a kind and reverential 
spirit peruse these nine Essays. He 
deals only with the true and the eternal. 
His piercing gaze at once shoots swiftly, 
surely through the outward and the su- 
perficial, to the inmost causes and work- 
ings. Any one can tell the time who 
looks on the face of the clock, but he 
loves to lay bare the machinery and 
show its moving principle. His words 
and his thoughts are a fresh spring, 



that invigorates the soul that is steeped 
therein. His mind is ever dealing with 
the eternal ; and those who only live to 
exercise their lower intellectual facul- 
ties, and desire only new facts and new 
images, and those who have not a feel- 
ing or an interest in the great question 
of mind and matter, eternity and nature, 
will disregard him as unintelligible and 
uninteresting, as they do Bacon and 
Plato, and, indeed, philosophy itself." — 
Douglas Je7-rold''s Magazine. 

" Beyond social science, because be- 
yond and outside social existence, there 
lies the science of self, the development 
of man in his individual existence, 
within himself and for himself Of this 
latter science, which may perhaps be 
called the philosophy of individuality, 
Mr. Emerson is an able apostle and 
interpreter." — League. 

" As regards the particular volume of 
Emerson before us, we think it an im- 
provement upon the first series of essays. 
The subjects are better chosen. They 
come more home to the experience of 
the mass of makind, and are conse- 
quently more interesting. Their treat- 
ment also indicates an artistic improve- 
ment in the composition."— S/;ectotor. 

"All lovers of literature will read 
Mr. Emerson's new volume, as the 
most of them have read his former one ; 
and if correct taste, and sober views of 
life, and such ideas on the higher sub- 
jects of thought as we have been ac- 
customed to account as truths, are 
sometimes outraged, we at least meet 
at every step vrith originality, imagi- 
nation, and eloqu-ence."— Inquirer. 



The Rationale of Religious Inquiry j 



Or, the Question stated, of Reason, the Bible, and the Church. By James 
Martineau. Third Edition, With a Critical Letter on Rationalism, Mira^ 
cles, and the Authority of Scripture, by the late Rev. Joseph Beanco 
White. 4s. paper cover ; 4s. 6d. cloth. 



24 



Works published by John Chapman. 



THE CATHOLIC SERIES — {continued.) 

The Roman Church and Modern Society. 

By E. QuiNET, of the College of France. Translated from the French Third 
Edition (with the Author's approbation), by C. Cocks, B.L. 8vo. 5s. cloth. 

"We take up this enlightened volume, 
which aims, in the spirit of history and 
philosophy, to analyze the Romanist 
le, with pecuUar pleasure. A 



prmcipie, witn pecuUar pleasure 
glance at the headings of the chapters 
much interested ourselves, and we doubt 
not will our readers :— The Superlatively 
Cathohc Kingdom of Spain ; Political 
Results of CathoUcism in Spain ; The 
Roman Church and the State ; The 
Roman Chm-ch and Science ; The Ro- 
man Church and iiistory ; The Roman 
Cimrch and Law ; The Roman Church 
and Philosophy; The Roman Church 
and Nations ; The Roman Church and 
the Universal Church.'-' — Christian Re- 
former. 

" Considered as a whole, the book be- 
fore us is the most powerful and philo- 
sophically consistent protest against 
the Roman Church which has ever 



claimed our attention, and, as a strong 
confirmation of its stirring efficiency, 
we may mention that the excitement it 
has created in Paris has subjected the 
author to a reprimand from both Cham- 
bers of the Legislature, and excommu- 
nication by the Pope." — Inquirer. 

" M. Quinet belongs to the movement 
party, and has lately been conspicuous 
in resisting the pretensions of the Jesuit 
and French clergy to the exclusive edu- 
cation of the youth of France. He has 
grappled with his theme both practi- 
cally, and in the philosophical spirit of 

history Rai'e merits are comprised 

in this volume a genuine spirit 

pervades it, and there are many pasa- 
ges of great depth, originaUty and elo- 
quence."— ^^^«s. 

" . . . . These eloquent and valuable 
lectures."— iV^ew Chwrch Advocate. 



Sermons of Consolation. 

By F. W. P. Greenwood, D.D. 5s. cloth. 



will meet with a grateful reception from 
all who seek instruction on the topics 
most interesting to a thoughtful mind. 
There are twenty-seven sermons in the 
volume." — Christian Examiner. 



6d. paper cover ; Is. cloth. 



" This is a really delightful volume, 
which we would gladly see producing 
its purifying and elevating influences in 
all our families." — Inquirer. 

" This beautiful volume we are sure 

Self-Culture. 

By WiEEiAM Elle^y Channing. 

Christianity, or Europe. 

Translated from the German of Novaeis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), by 
the Rev. J. Daeton. 6d. paper cover. 

The Critical and Miscellaneous >Tritings of Theodore Parker. 

Post 8vo, cloth, 6s. 

" It will be seen from these extracts 
that Theodore Parker is a writer of 
considerable power and freshness, if not 
originally. Of the school of Carlyle, or 
rathertakingthe same German originals 
for his models, Parker has a more sober 
style and a less theatric taste. His 
composition wants the grotesque anima- 
mation and i-ichness of Carlyle, but it is 
vivid, strong, and frequently pictur- 
esque, with a tenderness that the 
great Scotchman does not possess."— 
Spectator- 

" Viewing him as a most useful, as 
well as highly gifted man, we cordially 
welcome the appearance of an Eiighsh 
reprint of some of his best productions. 
The ' Miscellaneous' Pieces are charac- 
terised by his peculiar eloquence, which 
is without a parallel in the works of 



English writers. His language is 
almost entirely figurative ; the glories of 
nature are pressed into his service, and 
convey his most careless thought. This 
is the principal charm of his v^Titings; 
his eloquence is . altogether unhke that 
of the English orator or essayist ; it 
partakes of the grandeur of the forests 
in his native land; and we seem, when 
listening to his speech, to hear the 
music of the woods, the rustling of the 
pine-trees, and the ringing of the wood- 
man's axe. In this respect he resem- 
bles Emerson ; but, unlike that cele- 
brated man, he never discourses audi- 
bly with himself, in a language unknown 
to the world— he is never obscure ; the 
stream, though deep, reveals the glit- 
tering gems which cluster so thickly on 
its bed." — Inquirer. 



Mr. Chapman will supply this, as well as his Catalogue of 
English Publications, gratis^ or post free, on application. 



London, 142, Strand, 
Jan. 1st, 1849. 

A CATALOGUE 

OP 

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BOOKSELLER AND PUBLISHER. 



*^* Boohs specially ordered, and those not in stock, may he ohtairied hy 
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Monthly Magazine. 8vo, 3*. 6c/. 

The Massachusetts Quarterly Review. Conducted by 

R. W. Emerson, Theodore Parker, and J. Elliot Cabot, assisted by several 
other Gentlemen. Nos. 1 to 4, royal 8vo, sewed, 4*. each. (Continued 
quarterly.) 

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JOHN CHAPMAN, 142, STRAND. 7 



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